Infection Control Nurse
Vicki Johnson, RN - Kettering Medical Center
By KEN MOSIER
For What2Be
Vicki Johnson hears the question often — ‘What do you do besides getting people to wash their hands?’ Johnson is an infection preventionist in the Infection Control Prevention department of Kettering Medical Center.
“(Hand washing) is an important part of it,” Johnson said who added that her job encompasses much, much more. “A lot of it is prevention — that is why we are call preventionists.” Until recently her job was known as Infections Control Nurse. The Association of Professionals in Infection Control recently suggested the change to preventionist.
So what does she do to prevent infections in the hospital?
“On a typical day, you look at positive cultures,” she said. “We get a printout of all the positive cultures (within the hospital) and we go through them to see if they are healt- care related. You look at the timing, you look at the organisms and you look at the area (of the body) whether it is in the urine, blood or sputum.
“From that list you go look at charts and you can eliminate the ones that are related to something in the community because it is not health-care related. For those you don’t have to look any further,” she explained. “Should an (health-care related) infection occur, we track it to see how it can be prevented in the future, if it is tied to another infection, or if there is something going on.
“If we see too many of a certain type of organism within the facility, we work very closely with environmental services (for proper cleaning),” she said. The department also works closely with all other hospital units to prevent infections. “We want to make sure things are done right from the beginning. There are certain ways to do any sterile procedure.” She gave, as examples, the proper insertion of a catheter and the use of ventilators. “Before they go on the ventilator and while they are on it, it must be maintained in a certain way to prevent infection,” she explained.
Other parts of her job include working closely with the pharmacy department, taking calls and answering questions from physicians and other staff members and reporting certain infections to the local health departments. Johnson and her counterparts also serve on many committees in the hospital.
Johnson was working in a research laboratory with nuclear material in a weapons complex when her employer’s federal grant was withdrawn. Knowing that her job was likely to disappear, she enrolled in the Kettering College of Medical Arts and graduated with an associate degree and certification as a Registered Nurse.
As a nurse, she worked as a communicable disease specialist for the Warren County Health Department. She then returned to Kettering Medical Center as a nurse.
Infection preventionists can either be laboratory-trained workers or nurses. Certification as an infection preventionist is not easy. “It requires two years on-the-job experience full-time before you can even sit for the exam,” Johnson said. “You take the exam (and become certified) and five years later it has to be renewed.” Renewal is more than just filling out forms and submitting them. “You have to take the test again,” she said. “They want you to be really up-to-date.”
Besides hospitals, infection preventionists can be found in long-term care facilities, in home care, hospices and public health among other venues.
