Infection prevention and control: Adult social care

Infection control prevents or stops the spread of infections in healthcare settings. Preventing and reducing the transmission of infectious diseases is essential to ensuring people stay healthy. 

People who have contact with social care should have confidence in the cleanliness and hygiene of services and services provided. Staff should be skilled to carry out key practices such as effective hand washing and safe use of personal protective equipment (PPE). 

Antimicrobial resistance (over use/inappropriate use of antibiotics causes resistance) is also a global problem that makes infections harder to treat with existing medicines. Therefore, high standards of IPC reduce the opportunities for infections to spread and for resistance to develop.

Further resources for IPC in health and social care: 

• Infection Prevention and control - Resource for adult social care (GOV.UK)
• Infection Control (CDC)

Our community IPC practitioners are responsible for making it easy for social care staff to maintain high standards of infection prevention and control. Our key objectives are:

• We provide annual IPC audit and training to all care homes.
• Ensure all health and social care staff working in care homes, apply effective IPC precautions
• Reduce variation and optimise IPC practices across care settings in Salford
• Improve the application of knowledge and skills in infection prevention and control
• Help prevent the risk of the of infections
• Help with alignment of practice, education, monitoring, quality improvement and scrutiny of IPC practice
• Monitor infectious diseases
• Manage outbreaks of infectious disease, breaking the chain of infection and reducing inter-organisational transmission between staff and residents 

All infection prevention and control advice are governed by National Health Service (NHS) national standards (Adobe PDF).