Do you practice what you preach?

The role of the infection control nurse comprises surveillance, control, and teaching activities. An active, clinically oriented surveillance policy of infection control includes liaison with staff at ward levels. For implementing and monitoring of policy, an experiment was conducted on the use of an infection control nurse as a member of the ward team. Having the infection control nurse as a team member made all members of the hospital staff more aware of the problems of nosocomial infections and of methods of preventing them. The teaching duties of the infection control nurse are many. An important part of the teaching consists of lecture courses such as those run by the infection control team of the Islington Health District, London, England. This program for infection control includes use of the Epidemiology Board and All-Sites Pathogen Register. The educational needs of the infection control nurse must be met through in-service activities and the educational activities of the British Infection Control Nurses' Association.