The Journal of hospital infection
-
In today's competitive market infection control teams are under increasing pressure from purchasing authorities to provide hard data on quality issues. The initial aim of this study was to determine whether a modified form of the audit system used to monitor infection control standards in Derbyshire could be used effectively across three district health authorities. Infection control nurses in each of the study districts have different approaches to training with only Stafford using a link nurse system. ⋯ The value of education in improving standards of infection control was clearly demonstrated. An important finding in Stafford was that wards with link nurses obtained significantly higher scores. The value of using such a clinically based audit will be discussed.