Across the Health System, Infection Protection works closely with Environmental Services and front-line staff to keep staff members and patients safe.
A team that is usually behind the scenes received a special thank-you from Mount Sinai leadership in honor of International Infection Prevention Week—Monday, October 19, through Friday, October 23. “This year, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we want to express our heartfelt gratitude to the Mount Sinai Health System’s Infection Prevention team members,” says Vicki LoPachin, MD, MBA, Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Officer, Mount Sinai Health System. “We are proud to recognize our infection preventionists and hospital epidemiologists, who work tirelessly to minimize the risk of infection to our staff, our patients, our families, and the communities we serve every day.”
The team includes nurses, physicians, and public health professionals across Mount Sinai, says Bernard Camins, MD, Director of Infection Prevention for the Health System, united by the goal of preventing health care-associated infections. In normal times they keep busy creating and monitoring safety protocols and policies, and working directly with front-line staff. And then came the COVID-19 pandemic. “The surge brought unique challenges we had never faced before, and working behind the scenes, our teams put protocols and procedures in place to reduce the risk of transmission,” Dr. Camins says. At the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, the disease was not on the EPIC system. So the team used the designation “special droplet,” and created isolation protocols for a virus that had never been described before.
Leaders of Infection Prevention at a workgroup meeting in April 2019.
The team helped oversee Environmental Services staff who were keeping rooms and equipment safe, and went to COVID units to help ensure that staff members put on PPE correctly. They created zones within hospitals to indicate levels of contamination—the rooms of COVID-19 patients were taped off in red, hallways in yellow, and break rooms in green. And they, in conjunction with Employee Health Services, conducted contact tracing to keep track of patients and staff members who had been exposed to COVID-19.
“In spite of unprecedented circumstances, the Infection Prevention team maintained their professionalism and were always available to educate or collaborate with front-line colleagues,” Dr. LoPachin says. “We thank members of the team for their leadership, perseverance, patience, and dedication to their work.”