VIPTA is a statewide infection prevention and control education collaborative, led by the Virginia Healthcare-Associated Infections Advisory Group. Through partnership, VIPTA curates IPC resources for Virginia’s healthcare, congregate care, and public health settings.
⏱️Train Your Team’s IP Eye: Quickly Rank That Risk!
Want a quick, hands-on way to boost your team’s infection prevention instincts? Rank That Risk! is a fast-paced training tool from the VDH IP Training Power Tools collection. It helps healthcare workers think like an IP by reviewing real-life infection control breaches and ranking them from highest to lowest risk.
What to Expect: The activity includes a facilitator guide and six location themed picture sets, so you can choose the version that best fits your setting. Each card sparks discussion, encourages critical thinking, and helps staff see risks from an IP perspective.
How to Use It: This tool works well in team huddles, safety rounds, or short in-service sessions. You can rotate different sets over time to keep it engaging.
Why It Works: It’s visual, fast, and interactive. This activity helps teams practice real-time decision making in a low-pressure environment.
Target Audience: Essential IPC Education Level
Taking Antimicrobial Stewardship Beyond Hospital Walls: Community Outreach for Smarter Antibiotic Use
In an innovative effort to extend antimicrobial stewardship beyond the hospital setting, Carilion Clinic’s Antimicrobial Stewardship (AMS) team launched a community outreach initiative aimed at educating families about appropriate antibiotic use. Patient expectations play a key role in outpatient antibiotic prescribing. Meaningful conversations between patients and providers around antibiotic necessity are needed.
Carilion aimed to deliver accessible messaging through visually engaging billboards across southwest Virginia, reinforcing public health messages such as “Antibiotics don’t work on viruses” and “Antibiotics aren’t always the answer when you are sick.” Complementary posters in clinic waiting rooms provided patients and families with quick education, addressing common misconceptions about antibiotics for viral infections and raising awareness about potential antibiotic harms.
To further support their youngest patients, the AMS team partnered with a large pediatric practice to distribute “fever care kits” to improve at-home temperature tracking and symptom relief. Each kit contained a thermometer, simple symptom relief items, and an educational bookmark on fever and infections. These tangible resources helped empower caregivers to manage mild illnesses confidently at home and understand when antibiotics and healthcare visits might be unnecessary.
Early feedback from clinicians has been overwhelmingly positive, many of whom reported that these initiatives facilitated more productive conversations with patients about antibiotics. By bringing stewardship principles directly into the community, this is one more way Carilion’s AMS team is helping to reduce antibiotic misuse, slow the development of resistance, and preserve antibiotics’ effectiveness for future generations.
