National Infection Prevention and Control Manual

The National Infection Prevention and Control Manual (NIPCM) provides IPC guidance to all those involved in care provision and is considered best practice across all health and care settings in Scotland.  It is evidence based and aims to provide care staff with easily accessible information and supporting tools for infection prevention and control. It also aims to reduce practice variation and reduce the risk of healthcare associated infection (HAI).

The following chapters can be found within the NIPCM:

Chapter one Standard Infection Control Precautions, describes the basic infection prevention and control measures necessary to reduce the risk of transmission of infectious agent from both recognised and unrecognised sources of infection. These should be used by all staff, in all care settings, at all times, for all patients whether infection is known to be present or not.

Chapter two Transmission Based Precautions, describes additional precautions required to be used by staff when caring for patients with a known or suspected infection of colonisation.

Chapter three Healthcare associated infection incidents, outbreaks & data exceedance, supports NHS Scotland boards in the early recognition of potential infection incidents. It also provides a guide for Incident Management Teams to help assess and investigate any outbreaks and incidents.

Included within the chapter are outbreak assessment tools and details of the outbreak reporting processes. which enables a single channel of infection incident and outbreak assessment as well as information reporting, both internally within a NHS board area and externally to ARHAI and Scottish Government Health and Social Care Department (SGHSCD).

The data is used to identify possible and emerging healthcare associated infection (HAI), infection prevention and control (IPC) and antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threats within Scotland, as well as informing learning for the wider IPC community.

Chapter four Infection Control in the Built Environment and Decontamination. The healthcare built environment means the buildings and related infrastructure used for the provision of healthcare. This includes utilities such as water and ventilation. The healthcare built environment plays a critical role in the provision of safe patient care and protection to staff and visitors.

Chapter 4 is informed by evidence-based literature reviews and best practice guidance tools and resources relating to IPC in the built environment.

Care home Infection Prevention and Control Manual (CH IPCM)

In order to support care homes successfully adopt and implement the National Infection Prevention and Control Manual (NIPCM), this context specific Care Home Infection Prevention and Control Manual (CH IPCM) has been co-produced with national and local stakeholders. The content of the CH IPCM is completely aligned to the evidence based NIPCM.