The quality of professional practices in infection control programs in Brazil: a cross-sectional study

Objective To analyze the quality of professional practices in infection control programs regarding structure, process, and outcome. Method This is a quantitative, descriptive, and cross-sectional study carried out in 114 hospital infection control services in the five official regions of Brazil. The data were collected using a structured instrument whose psychometric properties were previously validated. Data treatment was performed by principal component analysis and non-parametric Kruskal-Wallis test. Results The best quality index of infection control programs was attributed to the South region, to hospitals that had 300 beds or more, to those that used the National Healthcare Safety Network criterion for infection surveillance and to places that carried out an active prospective search as their surveillance method. Conclusion and implications for practice: The quality of infection control programs is related to hospital location, size, and infection surveillance method. The creation of a quality index, hitherto unheard of in Brazilian studies, draws attention to the precarious performance of health services.