Reflection Journal Part-3 - Essay Example

In July I had an opportunity to attend an Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APICE) meeting with my preceptor. My preceptor convinced me to attend a meeting with her too see whether or not I would like to join APICE.The APICE meets once a month, to discuss strategies and information regarding diseases that they are facing or trying to prevent. The organization is a group of healthcare professionals from various hospitals in the state of Alabama. These healthcare professionals work together and share ideas regarding environmental problems, infectious diseases in their hospital or at their units.

Similarly, environmental issues, cutting edge technology, standards of practice, policies, procedures and auditable areas for the Joint Commission come under discussion at meetings of APICE. Another key aspect of APICE meetings is information sharing and deliberation on policies and processes. Typical attendees at APICE meetings are people in administrative positions such as nurse educators, infection disease nurses, Directors of Nursing, Clinical Nurse Managers, Public Health Nurses and the like.

The main contention behind APICE is the prevention of and awareness regarding infectious diseases inside hospitals.Each meeting of the APICE invites a speaker to share informative information regarding disease prevention. For the July session of the APICE that I attended, the speaker was Michelle DeVires, BS, MPH, ICC and she spoke about “Peripheral IV’s: Overlook source of Infection”. Ms. DeVires was very inspiring because she was not only a public health nurse but her specialty was infection prevention.

I was surprised that I could really comprehend some of the information that she was sharing with the group. She touched on a little statistics when she talked about population mean, and the frequency, standard deviation, bell curve, the probability of the p-value and many other statistical data forms. Although I thought that I would be lost, but I actually understood some of information that she was presenting.Ms. DeVires went on to discuss intervention and prevention as processes and she spoke about how hospitals needs to discontinue any IV’s that are not being utilized.

Anytime an IV is in place and is not being used, it has a tendency to set up an infection. It was revealed that most infections took root when the E.R. department starts an IV. The fast paced work demands of the E.R. meant that nurses or doctors were not cleaning or using sterile techniques to clean the site properly. Overall, Ms. DeVires’ speech was helpful and provided insight into practical problems facing hospitals.After the meeting, my preceptor and I went back to our facility to utilize information that the group had shared online, to see how it would benefit our facility.