Expanding and Strengthening the IPAC Community

As National Infection Control Week comes to a close, this year’s theme of “Unite and Conquer”, that together we can accomplish anything, has never been truer. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of collaboration, innovation, action, and support within the Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) community, and has reinforced the importance of implementing and strengthening existing IPAC best-practices.

As the IPAC community has long known, it takes a team of dedicated professionals to ensure that, when applied correctly and consistently, evidence-based practices and procedures help reduce the risk of infection transmission, and help keep communities safe and healthy.

Expanding IPAC community

IPAC professionals come from many different backgrounds within care settings, including nursing, medicine, public health, microbiology, and epidemiology. For decades they have worked together to develop, implement, educate, and evaluate best-practices and procedures that impact the prevention of infections, and help safeguard the health of the public.

Working with new partners across myriad different settings, Ontario’s close knit community puts a spotlight on IPAC protocols not only during the pandemic, but as part of day-to-day activities to keep Ontarians safe.

Public Health Ontario on the front lines

Since the onset of the pandemic IPAC professionals from many different organizations across Ontario came together to ensure that IPAC best-practices were being implemented across a wide variety of care settings. The pandemic also provided the opportunity for IPAC specialists to share their expertise in settings outside those typically served, including schools, stores, and congregate settings such as correctional facilities and military bases.

Public Health Ontario (PHO) IPAC specialists were deployed to the front lines to help manage outbreaks and to perform proactive visits to ensure that the necessary preventative measures were being applied to ensure the health and safety of all staff, volunteers, residents, and visitors.