​Infection Prevention and Control (IPAC) Action Teams continue to make progress on three actions from the IPAC Action Plan: conducting an environmental scan, the creation of a pan-Canadian set of case definitions for surveillance of healthcare associated infections, as well as improving infection prevention and control through the use of strategies known to improve behaviour and culture.

To advance the IPAC action plan goal of "Improving infection prevention and control through a national campaign for public, patients and providers, focusing on raising awareness and promoting behaviour change", CPSI conducted an environmental scan.  The purpose of the environmental scan was to examine the complexities of changing healthcare workers' behaviour and to better understand how the use theories, models and strategies can be used to bring about behavioural change.  The learnings and recommendations arising from this scan will be used to help inform future STOP! Clean Your Hands Day Campaigns.  The executive summary of the Environmental Scan of Behaviour Change Campaigns: Recommendations for the Canadian Patient Safety Institute is available for download from the CPSI website.

IPAC Canada has completed on a review of the current CNISP case definitions and determining the challenges and barriers to use of these case definitions in smaller hospitals and community hospitals.  The review has been sent to CNISP for consideration.  At the same time, a sub-committee of the Surveillance and Applied Epidemiology Interest Group of IPAC Canada is reviewing the long term care definitions from McGeer et all (2008) and SHEA (2012).  A report will be prepared for the action team early in 2017.  Next steps are engage provincial health authorities to adopt the acute care and long term care definitions, and to prepare a business case to influence the establishment of a national repository. 

Work is moving forward to Improve infection prevention and control (IPAC) through the use of strategies known to improve behaviour and culture. In July 2016, Canadian Patient Safety Institute (CPSI) launched a new initiative called SHIFT to Safety. SHIFT to Safety promotes a positive, safe healthcare experience and an approach to safety that encompasses the importance of public, providers and leader's roles in patient safety. One of the new areas of focus for SHIFT to Safety is strengthening teamwork, communication, leadership and patient safety culture with the goal to reduce harm and strengthen patient safety. October 6th, was the first National Webinar for the new SHIFT to Safety Platform.  The session objective was to introduce participants to new SHIFT to Safety content in behaviour change, knowledge translation, and implementation science. Dr. Jeremy Grimshaw and Dr. Kathy Suh presented to a 'sold-out' crowd of 237.  Feedback has been positive, with respondents asking for more calls, webinars and resources in knowledge translation and implementation science.  Based on the positive response a second call with SHN interventional leads and Dr. Grimshaw has been planned for Nov. 22nd, 2016.