We held our second HCAI Clinical Champions event on 23rd February. This was an idea of Dr Ranadeb Acharyya who recognised the need to both learn and share the strategies to prevent HCAI in our Trust. 25 HCAI Clinical Champions attended a Sharing and Leaning event in the Trust Boardroom where they heard how through improvement work we have reduced the risk of HCAIs in many areas and how we can further improve to make the risk of infection to the bare minimum.  Dr David Birkenhead provided the opening remarks to the audience of consultants, senior medical staff and senior nurses.

Presentations were given by Dr Anu Rajgopal outlining the global problem of antimicrobial resistance and how change is possible if we all across the globe reduce antibiotic prescribing. Dr Gavin Boyd spoke about the importance of learning from each case of C.difficile as this will help to prevent further cases and this area was expanded upon by Mel Johnson who spoke about the human factor elements and why effective investigations are so important.

Karen Tomlinson gave an interesting presentation of how viral gastroenteritis can spread so easily and the importance of good hand hygiene, isolation practices, restricting the movement of patients and staff when VGE is suspected and effective communications

Dr Tim Jackson spoke about vessel health and the need to have the correct assessment to ensure our patients have the right vascular access device at the right time to ensure no delays in treatment.