The Clinical Excellence Commission (CEC) will provide an opportunity for sharing of ideas, strategies, local solutions and concerns with respect to COVID-19 pandemic preparedness. Information and resources about COVID-19 Infection Protection and Control are available on the CEC website.
The Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) Clinical Response Network Community of Practice will be multidisciplinary and include representation from all districts and networks. It will enable clinicians and clinical managers in infection prevention and control from all districts to provide expert advice and guidance to the system, and to escalate matters that require a statewide or system response.
The aim of these sessions is to:
The clinical lead is a member on the National Infection Control Expert Group to the Australian Health Protection Principle Committee and is linked in this process. The NSW PPE group will also be linked in to this network.
CEC will escalate issues raised by the community of practice to Strategic Reform and Planning. Key information will be collected and distributed through MOH-COVID19-ClinicalAdvice@health.nsw.gov.au, which will be monitored by the Strategic Reform and Planning.
Collated issues/advice will be escalated by Ms Willcox through to the Public Health Emergency Operations Centre (PHEOC) and/or the State Health Emergency Operations Centre (SHEOC) as appropriate.
PHEOC and SHEOC responses will be provided to Strategic Reform and Planning and then to the community of practice secretariat(s).
Each community of practice will have a clinical lead appointed by Deb Willcox, Deputy Secretary, Health System Strategy and Resources.
The clinical lead will:
A group which is able to endorse statewide changes or make decisions that impacts a unit or system or allocate funding to recommendations.
The Infection Prevention and Control Clinical Response Network Community of Practice is a combination of existing HAI (Healthcare Associated Infections) steering and expert advisory members in addition to infection control practitioners and infectious diseases physicians and AMS pharmacist representative of the local health districts and speciality health networks to provide extensive and conclusive expertise on infection prevention and control.
The purpose to the community of practice is for rapid communication, consultation and input to subject matter content in relation to COVID-19. The community of practice will be used as our primary point of contact for clinical and operational infection prevention and control expertise on COVID-19 and to facilitate consistency of messaging through existing organisational and network governance.
This group will discuss and formulate advice on infection prevention and control to all other communities of practice utilising existing formal governance through HAI steering and EAC committees prior to escalation through to Strategic Reform and Planning.
A weekly webinar open to all infection control practitioners across NSW will be held to compliment this network, identifying issues for escalation to the Infection Prevention and Control Clinical Response Network Community of Practice forming part of the agenda. An issues log from these meetings will be shared with the community of practice to consider at their regular meetings.
A combination of existing strategic Healthcare Acquired Infections (HAI) steering committee members, NSW HAI Expert Advisory Committee members, infection prevention and control practitioners representative of the LHD/SHNs as nominated by their Chief Executives, infectious diseases physicians, Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) infectious diseases physicians/pharmacist and invited key infection prevention and control practitioners with biocontainment expertise.
If you would like to join the community please contact CEC-COVID19-IPAC-CoP@health.nsw.gov.au.
Weekly basis on a Thursday, commencing 26 March from 3-4pm using Skype for business. Skype for business details will be attached to the calendar invite.
