The Intersection of Research, Infection Prevention, and Patient Care

Session Description: Clinical research such as trials of new biological or chemical agents, medical device trials, and animal research studies within patient spaces are becoming increasingly more common in the healthcare setting. These studies occur in a wide range of locations including both inpatient and ambulatory settings. Often these projects take place without any infection prevention (IP) input due to factors such as a lack of IP awareness of projects occurring at a facility or infection preventionists not having experience or confidence in reviewing clinical research documents. Initiation of clinical research studies without IP input can increase the risk for infectious complications for both the subjects and the researchers. The need for a protocol to help infection preventionists evaluate research as well as a tool to provide meaningful feedback was identified and a comprehensive research review protocol was created.
Using our academic facility research review protocol as a model, this presentation will focus on how to develop a robust infection prevention research study review process. Our protocol provides an algorithm for assessing the need for infection prevention input on research studies, as well as information on how to deliver input and feedback. Infection prevention considerations for categories such as transmission-based precautions, healthcare worker restrictions, and device reprocessing to reduce infectious risk to those participating in research will be discussed. Participants will be given tools to aid in developing a partnership between infection prevention, ambulatory, and research teams by creating clear communication pathways and avenues for questions or concerns. The target audience for this talk is infection preventionists at academic facilities or any facilities who do research. Additional target audiences include those who work in ambulatory settings where they may encounter research subjects in their patient population.