Between a Rock and Hard Place, March 2022

A Call to Action on Improving our National Strategy for Pandemic Preparedness and Patient Safety

APIC’s infection preventionist members have always played a pivotal role in maintaining the health of patients, employees, and visitors to healthcare facilities, and communities at large. But when the coronavirus pandemic hit, their prominence and importance within healthcare organizations grew.

BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE: Recommendations for Balancing Patient Safety and Pandemic Response explores the lessons infection preventionists have learned during their fight against COVID-19. Written by APIC’s COVID-19 Task Force, this paper highlights actions that must be taken at the healthcare facility level to strengthen infection prevention and control programs nationwide, and at the government level to make sure our nation has the infection prevention capacity to handle future pandemics.

The authors of this paper make the case for investment in the infection prevention and control infrastructure in our nation’s healthcare facilities so that basic infection control practices can be hardwired into processes of care. Building stronger infection prevention programs throughout healthcare will not only improve our ability to protect the public during future pandemics but will simultaneously improve patient safety.