Infection Prevention and Control

Preventing and controlling infection is a fundamental component of good care. It’s essential to patient, visitor and staff safety and wellbeing.

A stock image from Pixabay of protective gloves and a facemask

Delivering infection prevention and control (IPC) can be challenging. It can be difficult to keep up to speed with latest research, policies and how they impact on the hospice environment.

We are here to support you in your role.

Resources on this page

"Infection prevention and control is more than dealing with C.diff and MRSA - it is a core element of practice, intrinsic to high quality patient care."

Rick Catlin, Assistant Director of Infection Prevention and Control, Bolton NHS Foundation Trust

Delivering infection prevention and control

The group's key priorities are:

  • providing training and updates on topical and relevant IPC issues;
  • providing support and advice to IPC leads;
  • building a hospice IPC community by offering peer learning and advice.

Receive updates and key communications by joining the Infection, Prevention and Control ECHO Network, below.

Infection Prevention and Control ECHO Network

We provide ECHO™ resources from past webinars including recordings, documents and best practice ideas.

Contact the ECHO team to find out more, sign up and access resources.

Every Action Counts review

We have been delighted with your contribution to a review of NHS England 'Every Action Counts' videos and toolkits, to make these important resources work for hospices.

The following tools are ready to support excellence in audit standard IPC behaviours for your hospice.

Workbook of IPC SICPs audits 2022

Access the Standard Infection Control Precautions audit workbook

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Every Action Counts: Because I Care

This video is part of a set of resources titled ‘Every action counts’ supporting staff in infection prevention and control excellence.

These products have been developed by Public Health England to support staff, to strengthen infection prevention and control (IPC) leadership and culture, staff and patient engagement, training, and operational management.

This video is based on the concept ‘because I care’ originally created by NHS England and NHS Improvement South West regional communications team. The video was recreated so that it could be used right across the country.

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Every action counts – Hierarchy of Controls video

This video is part of a set of resources titled ‘Every action counts’ supporting staff in infection prevention and control (IPC) excellence.

These products have been developed by Public Health England to support staff, to strengthen IPC leadership and culture, staff and patient engagement, training, and operational management.

This animation is a training tool to support staff – clinical and non-clinical – to understand the different control measures that underpin IPC and how they work together to reduce risk.

Meet the team  

We have over 160 infection control leads in our Network. Contact Julia or Stuart to be included in our mailing or for any questions relating to infection prevention and control.

Julia Russell leads the Network. Julia is Senior Clinical and Quality Improvement Lead, Clinical, Hospice UK.

Stuart Duncan disseminates information. He works for Hospice UK as the Clinical Team Administrator and is the administrator of this group.

Ask a colleague is a discussion group on the Hospice UK website where you can post queries and discuss issues with professionals.

Email Julia Russell

Find out more

Email Stuart Duncan

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Two members of hospice staff safely helping a patient to their feet

Patient Safety Project

The Patient Safety Project enables clinical benchmarking within hospices across the UK.
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Audit tools for measuring quality

Audit tools for measuring quality

More information about the tools we offer to support hospices to audit their services.
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Useful resources for hospice care providers to help improve how they gather patient, family and carer feedback on their experiences of hospice care

Patient and family experience

Receiving feedback from patients and families about their experiences is important for demonstrating and improving the quality of hospice services.
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Quality Assurance: we help ensure hospices are fully equipped to provide quality care for patients and their families

Quality assurance

We help ensure hospices are fully equipped to provide quality care for patients and their families.

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