By HFT Editorial Staff

Yale School of Nursing faculty recently helped design and produce a first-of-its-kind infection prevention resource to give long-term care facilities the tools they need to battle COVID-19 and other infections. The resource, Infection Prevention Compendium for Long-Term Care Facilities, is available online for free.

“From a clinical standpoint, no compendium with this level of depth and breadth exists,” says Executive Deputy Dean Dr. Carmen Portillo, who wrote the project’s proposal and whose research career includes HIV infection prevention. “Everything a facility could need is organized here in one place.”

The collection draws in part on the experience of Dr. Nicole Colline, specialty director for the Family Nurse Practitioner program and the nurse practitioner for a 120-bed long-term care facility in Connecticut that was on the frontlines of the pandemic starting in early March 2020.

“Every person’s role is important during COVID, and every person’s role changed during COVID,” Dr. Colline says. “That’s why the compendium goes beyond the measures taken by nurses and certified nursing assistants. We designed this resource to cover everyone from the receptionist you meet at the front door to the kitchen staff, laundry services, and family members who are part of the facility’s ecosystem.”

In one example, Dr. Colline described how something as simple as the standard water pitcher in every room needed to be rethought. To prevent infection, her facility switched from reusable pitchers to a disposable version. That one change meant alerting the person who orders supplies, as well as the cleaning staff, the clinical providers, visitors and family members, and everyone else who might enter a resident’s room and fulfill their request for a drink of water.

Dr. Elaine Larson, who served as the nexus of the compendium partnership, said the compendium serves a huge need for a vulnerable and often forgotten population.

“For many staff in long-term care facilities, infection control takes a back seat to making residents feel cared for and cared about,” she says. “You need touching in long-term care, and not just for patients who have intimate needs. For many of these care providers, their primary goal is to make residents as happy as they can. Sometimes that comforting touch interferes with social distancing and masking, which patients living with Alzheimer’s or dementia don’t understand.”