Hidden Gaps That Threaten Your Respiratory Season Readiness
A Practical Respiratory Season Readiness Guide for Infection Preventionists
Welcome to this month's IP Mentor® Monthly Digest, your practical resource for real-world infection prevention guidance.
This month, we focused on preparing for respiratory season and looking beyond the obvious. When we think about respiratory season readiness, we often think about vaccination, PPE, hand hygiene, isolation precautions, and supplies. All of those are important, but having them in place does not always mean your facility is ready.
One of the biggest lessons I have learned over the years is that the gaps that cause problems are not always the big, obvious ones. That is why respiratory season readiness should be about more than checking items off a list. It is an opportunity to look at how well your systems actually work.
This Month's Focus
This month we explored five important parts of respiratory season readiness:
Preparing before respiratory illness begins to increase
Making sure policies work in practice
Strengthening environmental cleaning and EVS partnerships
Using surveillance to guide action
Communicating the right information to the right people
Together, these topics reinforce one important message. Readiness is not about having everything on paper. It is about making sure your systems work when you need them.
Start Before You Need the Plan
The best time to find a gap in your respiratory season readiness plan is before you need the plan.
Start by reviewing the basics:
Are your policies current?
Do you have the supplies you need?
Are those supplies available where staff actually use them?
Do staff understand respiratory hygiene, PPE use, isolation processes, vaccination, illness reporting, and outbreak response?
Is your surveillance system ready?
Do you have clear education for patients, residents, families, and visitors?
But do not stop with asking whether these things exist. Also ask: Would this process work the way we expect it to if we needed it tomorrow? That one question can change the way you look at readiness.
A full storeroom does not help if PPE is not available at the point of care. A current policy does not help if staff do not know what it says. A surveillance system does not help if no one knows what to do when the numbers change. Preparation means looking at how the pieces work together.
A Policy Does Not Equal Readiness
Having an updated respiratory illness policy does not automatically mean your facility is prepared. The real question is whether staff can carry out what the policy says.
Walk through the process from the perspective of the person who will actually need to use it:
What happens when a patient or resident develops symptoms?
Where does the staff member find PPE?
Is isolation signage readily available?
Who needs to be notified?
What happens on night shift and weekends?
Does everyone know who to contact when they have a question?
This is where Environment of Care rounds can be especially valuable. They give you an opportunity to see whether the processes you have created on paper actually work in the environment. Sometimes what appears to be a compliance problem is really an access, communication, or process problem.
Environmental Cleaning Is a Team Effort
September also gave us an opportunity to recognize Environmental Services Week and the important role our EVS partners play in infection prevention. We cannot do our jobs effectively without them.
Respiratory season is a great time to review high-touch surfaces, shared equipment, disinfectant use, contact times, cleaning frequency, and supply availability. One of the most useful questions you can ask during your rounds is also one of the simplest:
Who cleans this? If you ask three people and get three different answers, you may have found a gap.
Shared equipment is a great example. Responsibility may fall to nursing, respiratory therapy, EVS, another department, or a combination of people. What matters is that everyone understands who is responsible and what process should be followed. This is also why I encourage Infection Preventionists to round with EVS, not simply round on EVS. Ask your EVS partners: What gets in the way of doing this correctly every time?
Then listen.
You may hear about workload, product access, equipment, room turnover, training, or communication. The people doing the work often know exactly where the barriers are. I have experienced this many times in my practice as an IP.
Surveillance Should Lead to Action
Collecting respiratory illness data is important, but collecting the data is only the beginning.
Your respiratory season readiness surveillance process should help answer questions such as:
What change or threshold gets our attention and triggers action?
Who needs to know?
What happens next?
When do we increase precautions?
When should leadership be notified?
When do we involve public health?
Surveillance should help us make decisions, not simply document what already happened. Before respiratory illness activity increases, walk through what you would do if your data suddenly changed tomorrow. If you find yourself saying, "I'm not sure," you have identified an opportunity to strengthen your process now.
Communication Can Make or Break the Plan
We finished September by looking at another hidden gap that can affect even a strong infection prevention program—communication.
You can have updated policies, adequate PPE, good surveillance, and staff who understand what to do, but what happens when something changes?
Who needs to know?
Who tells them?
How quickly does that communication happen?
Does everyone receive the same message?
Communication is one of those systems we often assume will work until we are in the middle of a situation and realize it does not. As you prepare for respiratory season, do not just review what you will do. Review how everyone will know it is time to do it.
And remember that effective communication does not always mean giving people more information. Sometimes it means making the most important information easier to understand and remember.
Looking Ahead to Infection Prevention Week
That idea about communication also gives us a great way to start thinking about International Infection Prevention Week in October.
Before planning games, treats, contests, posters, or educational activities, ask yourself:
What do I want staff to know, remember, or do differently when Infection Prevention Week is over?
Start with your message. Then build your activities around it. You do not need an entire week packed with elaborate activities to make an impact. Keep it simple and purposeful. Choose one important message and one educational activity that supports it. Consider adding something fun or interactive. Also, find a way to recognize staff who are doing infection prevention well.
Infection Prevention Week is an opportunity to communicate why infection prevention matters and remind people that infection prevention belongs to everyone.
IP Mentor® Insight
Every topic we discussed this month comes back to the same principle. Strong infection prevention is not about having a perfect plan. It is about creating systems that work in the real world.
Look beyond whether the policy exists. Ask whether people can follow it.
Look beyond whether supplies are stocked. Ask whether people can access them.
Look beyond whether surveillance is occurring. Ask what happens when something changes.
Look beyond whether information was sent. Ask whether the right people received it, understood it, and knew what to do next.
You do not have to fix everything at once. Start with what you have and ask good questions that can identify hidden gaps. Then strengthen one process at a time.
That is how we move from having an infection prevention plan to having a respiratory season readiness program that actually works.
Need a Mentor?
Sometimes identifying the gap is the easy part.
The harder part is deciding what to address first and figuring out how to make meaningful changes when your plate is already full.
My IP Mentor® 12-Week One-to-One Mentoring Program provides individualized support to help you evaluate your program, identify priorities, develop realistic strategies, and work through challenges as they arise.
✔ Personalized coaching
✔ Practical implementation strategies
✔ Decision support for challenging situations
✔ Support prioritizing competing responsibilities
✔ An experienced Infection Preventionist in your corner
If you are struggling with an area of your infection prevention program, you do not have to have everything figured out before reaching out.
Tell me what you are struggling with, and we can start there.
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