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.
Adult Vaccine Activity Book
The fall respiratory vaccine season will soon be upon us, and the Adult Vaccine Activity Book from Alliant Health Solutions is a great way to get your staff engaged. This fun resource includes vaccine themed activities like word searches, word scrambles, and adult-friendly coloring pages. These activities can get the conversation started to reduce hesitancy and boost staff enthusiasm for infection prevention. Let’s gear up and make this respiratory season our safest yet!
Ways to Use This Resource
- Staff engagement: Share at huddles or drop them in break rooms; these are great to sprinkle around the facility. Try putting out a new one or two each week to keep it fresh.
Target Audience: Essential IPC education level
Taking Antimicrobial Stewardship Beyond Hospital Walls: Community Outreach for Smarter Antibiotic Use
In an innovative effort to extend antimicrobial stewardship beyond the hospital setting, Carilion Clinic’s Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) team launched a community outreach initiative aimed at educating families about appropriate antibiotic use. Patient expectations play a key role in outpatient antibiotic prescribing. Meaningful conversations between patients and providers around antibiotic necessity are needed.
Carilion aimed to deliver accessible messaging through visually engaging billboards across southwest Virginia, reinforcing public health messages such as “Antibiotics don’t work on viruses” and “Antibiotics aren’t always the answer when you are sick.” Complementary posters in clinic waiting rooms provided patients and families with quick education, addressing common misconceptions about antibiotics for viral infections and raising awareness about potential antibiotic harms.
To further support their youngest patients, the AMS team partnered with a large pediatric practice to distribute “fever care kits” to improve at-home temperature tracking and symptom relief. Each kit contained a thermometer, simple symptom relief items, and an educational bookmark on fever and infections. These tangible resources helped empower caregivers to manage mild illnesses confidently at home and understand when antibiotics and healthcare visits might be unnecessary.
Early feedback from clinicians has been overwhelmingly positive, many of whom reported that these initiatives facilitated more productive conversations with patients about antibiotics. By bringing stewardship principles directly into the community, this is one more way Carilion’s AMS team is helping to reduce antibiotic misuse, slow the development of resistance, and preserve antibiotics’ effectiveness for future generations.
