Development of a toolkit for infection surveillance in long-term care.

Background: Establishing a robust, standardized and validated surveillance system in long-term care (LTC) homes is a necessary strategy to assess and analyze infection trends over time, inform infection prevention and control (IPAC) practices in order to reduce healthcare-associated infections and be compliant with legislative requirements. Methods: To support strong surveillance programs in LTC, a surveillance toolkit was developed and trialed in a LTC corporation consisting of eighteen LTC homes across Southern Ontario. The tool was developed, piloted and trialed using available best practices and revised based on feedback from the LTC IPAC Leads. An evaluation was conducted using formal telephone and in-person interviews, online surveys and informal discussions through regular webinars. Results: Suggestions for improvements to the toolkit included a preference for forms that automated case counting and rate calculations and the removal of tools or sections of tools deemed unnecessary by the user. Conclusion: Although the IPAC Leads did not use all of the tools consistently, they felt the toolkit improved their surveillance process by increasing the standardization and consistency of the tracking of infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]