VIPTA is a statewide infection prevention and control education collaborative, led by the Virginia Healthcare-Associated Infections Advisory Group. Through partnership, VIPTA curates IPC resources for Virginia’s healthcare, congregate care, and public health settings.
Your Infection Prevention Week Game Plan Starts Here
International Infection Prevention Week (IIPW) is October 19–25! It is a great time to celebrate the people who make infection prevention happen. Get your team in the game with activities that build skills, raise awareness, and keep others safe.
What to Expect:
International Infection Prevention Week: Start with the official IIPW site. Be on the lookout for resources for this year’s theme, Generations of Infection Prevention: PAST. PRESENT. PROTECTED.
VIPTA Resource Library: Build your game plan with resources for each daily focus. Monday covers sterile processing, TB, and outbreaks. Tuesday focuses on hand hygiene. Wednesday covers vaccines and antibiotics. Thursday focuses on environment of care. Finish the week on Friday with technology.
VDH Infection Prevention Training Power Tools: Add some fun with ready-to-use puzzles, coloring pages, games, and step-by-step training guides.
How to use it:
- Make a daily play: Pick one resource for each day. Send it to unit leaders with a few discussion points or trivia questions to share with staff. (Hack: A Project Firstline Micro-Learn is ready to go if you don’t want to make something new.)
- Set up a game station: Put puzzles, coloring pages, or trivia in a break room or staff area. Add a prize drawing to boost play.
- Cheer on your team: Use Cheers for Peers certificates to thank staff for great infection prevention work. Or, create an IIPW Kudos Wall where staff can leave notes or shout outs to celebrate each other.
Target Audience: Foundational & Intermediate IPC Education Level
LeadingAge Virginia
Meet Emily Varvil, Project Manager at LeadingAge Virginia, an association of not-for-profit aging services serving older Virginians across the aging services continuum. She is passionate about empowering adult day centers (ADCs) in Virginia with infection prevention knowledge and resources. Over the last 2 years, LeadingAge Virginia has worked on the creation and implementation of infection prevention template policies for Virginia’s ADCs. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, these centers were largely without formal written IP policies. However, LeadingAge Virginia realized during the pandemic that as participants socialize in close contact with one another, more thorough IP policies were needed.
Emily and her team have set up a website of grant-developed infection prevention and control (IPC) resources and orchestrated three regional half-day workshops for ADC leaders across the state (Williamsburg, Arlington, and Roanoke). During the IPC workshops, Emily reviews the resources available to the ADCs, provides at-home infection prevention resources for ADC participants (see links below), and includes presentations from Health Quality Innovators about antimicrobial stewardship and Virginia Department of Health about infection prevention education and adult learning principles. They also discuss other available IPC resources from VIPTA and the Virginia Infection Prevention Training Center (VIPTC).
All of the grant-developed resources will continue to be available online when the grant funding ends in July 2024 to help centers keep their great infection prevention work going.
LeadingAge Virginia webpage containing the grant-developed IPC resources: https://leadingagevirginia.org/page/AdultDayIPC
“At home” resources for participants and their caregivers: https://leadingagevirginia.org/page/ADCIPC_AtHome
The workshops for ADCs are being funded by the Adult Day Center Model Infection Control and Prevention Policies grant. This grant was awarded to LeadingAge Virginia in 2022 by the Virginia Department of Health Office of Epidemiology, funded by the CDC under Federal Award Identification Number NU50CK00055.
