[Organization, training and leadership of infection prevention and control nurses in Spanish hospitals: a...

Infection Prevention and Control nurses (IPCN) are members of infection prevention and control (IPC) teams in healthcare facilities. The aim of the study was to describe the composition of the IPC teams, the profile of the IPCN and to describe structural and functional dependencies in both the team and the organization.

A cross-sectional descriptive study was carried out between July 2019 and January 2020 in Spanish hospitals with recruitment of IPCN through non-probabilistic snowball sampling. Based on the variables collected, a univariate and bivariate descriptive analysis was performed.

108 surveys were received from 108 centers, 83% public. 26 models of IPC were described. Of the centers, 45% declared ratios of one IPCN for more than 200 beds and only 13% declared ratios of one for less than 150 beds. Only 22% had all nurses trained at the postgraduate level. 84% of IPCN were structurally dependent on nursing and 70% were functionally dependent on physicians. According to the opinion of the IPCN, efficiency would be favored with: 1) multidisciplinarity (72.2%); 2) having reference nurses (93.5%); 3) IPCN with a management position (64.8%).

Spanish IPCN are part of heterogeneous IPC teams, with ratios far from recommendations, deficient training and structurally dependent on nursing and functionally on medical services.