[Hospital perspective on nursing staff role and function in infection control]

Medical treatment-related infections may increase mortality rates and worsen patient conditions while raising medical costs and reducing quality of treatment. Hospitals must shield patients as well as their families, visitors, and hospital staff from infection. Therefore, an important mission of hospital medical staffs is infection prevention. Nurses have the most frequent and extensive contact with patients and their families. Their work also requires frequent contact with fellow medical staffs. Nurses thus face a particularly high risk of infection. This paper identifies those individuals in hospital settings who face the highest risk of medical care-related infections and describes existing infection control and monitoring practices as well as medical care-related infection prevention and control measures in order to identify the infection control role and function of nurses.