Careers

Description:

Position Description
Department: Infection Prevention
Title: Infection Preventionist
Position Status: Hourly - 36 - 40 hrs/week initially; may reduce to 24 - 40 hrs/week after a year.

POSITION SUMMARY
Leads and facilitates the provision of excellent, safe evidence-based, efficient infection prevention practices and standards to achieve optimum patient outcomes; facilitates compliance with regulatory and accreditation organizations; identification of infectious disease processes; surveillance and epidemiologic investigation; preventing and controlling the transmission of infectious agents; works effectively and collaboratively with other patient care teams and providers at LCCHC.

DUTIES & RESPONSIBILITIES
1. Demonstrates knowledge of Infection Prevention policies and procedures to clearly communicate this knowledge to employees during interactions.
2. Responsible for mandatory infectious disease data reporting and surveillance and data collection/analysis of infectious disease data.
3. Maintains knowledge of standard practices, policies and regulations in multiple areas to keep LCCHC current with state, federal and accreditation requirements.
4. Collaborates with Employee Health & Safety to evaluate and improve work practice and engineering controls to decrease or eliminate potential exposures; includes Personal
Protective Equipment (PPE) use.
5. Collaborates with Sterile Processing & Environmental Services to improve cleaning, sterilization, disinfection and asepsis processes.
6. Conducts on-going surveillance and documentation of infections, utilizing priority- directed, targeted surveillance method to ensure safe outcomes.
7. Assists in performing organization-wide Environment of Care rounds in coordination with other staff to eliminate deficiencies and ensure corrective actions have been taken; inspects environment and observes personnel activities for the purpose of detecting possible infection hazards and to evaluate compliance with Infection Prevention policies.
8. Assists in the reporting of hospital and clinic patients with communicable diseases to county and/or state health department to meet regulatory requirements.
9. Assists in the investigation of clusters of infection when identified to decrease further transmission of communicable diseases.
10. Coordinates hospital’s education efforts with respect to infection control.
11. Assists in leading activities of the Infection Prevention & Control Committee.
12. Participates in Antimicrobial Stewardship Program to minimize risk of development of
MDROs within facility.
13. Other duties, as assigned.

QUALIFICATIONS
1. RN licensure required

2. A post-secondary degree from an accredited academic institution (an Associate’s degree or higher) required; BSN or other related Bachelor’s degree preferred.
3. Knowledge of epidemiology, infectious disease reporting preferred.
4. Must complete course in basic surveillance by a recognized body, such as “The
Fundamentals of Infection Surveillance, Prevention and Control” offered by APIC within
12 months of hire.
5. Must achieve Certification in Infection Prevention and Control (CIC) designation within
24 months of hire.
6. Intermediate MS Excel and data management & analysis skills; proficient with MS Office
Suite, including MS Word and Powerpoint.