I am at the end of the fifth year of the school of Hygiene and Preventive Medicine at the University of Pisa and just before the end I wanted to taste some examples of the best european infection control. Thanks to a precious man, professor Peter Lachman, pediatrician and CEO of the ISQua, I was connected with Haelo that is a quality improvement agency collaborating with many hospitals, one of which is the Salford Royal Hospital. At Haelo they planned for me one-day full immersion on the programs they run routinely with professionals and academics, their methodology and strategies for QI. The next day I was directly into the hospital visiting the amazing A&E Village that is the result of a recent renovation structurally and organizationally: the workflow is designed to let the patient get out of the unit in less than 4 hours unless complications, major injuries or frailty and they normally obtain the >90% patients target! I spent the next days with the Infection Control Team, visiting wards, receiving explanations for every question I posed them, participating to a part of the Induction Package that every new employee must pass before beginning the job. I visited the lab too, talked to a clinical microbiologist about his occupation there and sharing the differences with my country hospital system. I followed a specialist nurse of the IV team in her activity and it was very impressive in matter of competence! Finally two running projects they showed me were the NAAS and CAAS (Nurse and Community Assessment and Accreditation System), examples for how to fix chronic problems like nurses’ professional update and the link between hospital and local health authorities. Outstanding!
Among the other things, have to flag an excellent restaurant inside the hospital, very nice meals consumed during my stay.
Outside I visited the city of Manchester in occasion of the Chinese New Year, the Salford University swimming pool, very nice indeed and the surroundings of Salford, in particular it is worth of remark the most modern area that is MediaCity.
In conclusion, it has been an intense and intensive experience, deep into the world of Infection Control to lean and bring back home a different way to tackle the antimicrobial resistance and the infection transmission in the hospital setting not to mention many ready-to-use tools for my hospital!
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Giulio Pieve
Public Health Resident, University of Pisa