/ Implementation of a training strategy for infection control in the European Union /

Dear NCP,

We want to inform you that the call for the evaluation of Infection Control / Hospital Hygiene (IC/HH) courses within theEuropean Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) commissioned project “implementation of a training Strategy for Infection Control in the European Union” (TRICE – IS) has been launched. Thiscall, that now is open, will end on the 15th of January 2014.

The background to this next step in the ECDC programmes to strengthen prevention and control of Healthcare Associated Infections (HAI) in Europeoriginated from the large differences and lack of harmonization that TRICE identified amongst European Countries in IC/HH training programmes for healthcare professionals.

The need to overcome these differences is one of the key challenges in Europe. It had already been identified in the IPSE project and was addressed in European Council Recommendation on patient safety and HAIof 9th June 2009(2009/C 151/01), which underlined the need to strengthen IC/HH training programmes in Europe, as reported in the chapter on HAI:

“(d) foster education and training of healthcare workers by:

(i) at national or regional level, defining and implementing specialised infection control training and/or education programmes for infection control staff and strengthening education on the prevention and control of healthcare associated infections for other healthcare workers.”

The 2012 “REPORT FROM THE COMMISSION TO THE COUNCIL”in the area of the prevention and control of HAI at Member State (MS) level included the statements:

  • “ensured adequate numbers of specialised IC/HH staff with time set aside for this task in hospitals and other healthcare institutions;
  • improved training of specialised IC/HH staff and better aligned qualifications between MS.”

To achieve these goals ECDC commissioned in 2010 the “Training Infection Control in Europe” (TRICE) project, built on the approach adopted in Work Package 1 of the 2006 EU funded project “Improving Patient Safety in Europe” (IPSE).

Oneof the main purposes of TRICE Project was to strengthen the IC/HH training in EU Member States (MS) updating the state of the art of information regarding this training in European countries in order to facilitate the implementation of a strategy for promoting standardized training initiatives in all MS and other European countries.

The TRICE project highlighted some critical aspects to promote the harmonisation of IC/HH training initiatives, namely:

  • presence of IC/HH courses;
  • course duration;
  • Competent Bodies organising IC/HH training (mostly Universities, Scientific and Professional Societies and National State Agencies);
  • Institutions recognising the courses (largely Ministries of Health and Universities);
  • lack of an official recognition of “IC/HH degrees” for healthcare professionals in many MS.

Based on the results of TRICE, an ECDC Technical Document, named “Core Competencies for Infection Control/Hospital Hygiene professionals in the European Union” (European IC/HH Core Competencies), was agreed by all European Countries and made public in March 2013 (

In 2012, considering the importance of continued support for national IC/HH training programmes, ECDC issued the TRICE-Implementation Strategy (TRICE-IS)project, whose main purpose was to promote the harmonization and the mutual recognition in Europe of training programmes based on European IC/HH Core Competencies.

The TRICE - IS goals are:

to evaluate courses on HAI prevention and control in EU Member States, EEA/EFTA countries and EU acceding countries and establish a catalogue of courses ;

to develop and edit an “Infection Control/Hospital Hygiene WIKI” as an “e-learning tool” for trainers.

TRICE – IS, after a consensus with the representatives of the EU Member States, EEA/EFTA countries and EU acceding countries, is now launching the first call for IC/HH course / training materials.

The process evaluation is based on:

  1. the eligibility of the courses and training materials based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria (annex 2); These criteria should be completely fulfilled in order to proceed to the evaluation process; their absence will not enable any evaluation;
  2. a set of standards for course evaluation (annex 3); these criteria will be evaluated by the Review Experts and those mentioned as “essential” should be present;
  3. a defined process reported in the attached flow chart (annex 1);
  4. a group of Review Experts identified amongst European IC/HH professional experts in IC/HH training;
  5. a guarantee of privacy for the submitted documentation.

The process will end with a confidential written feed-back document and, if positively evaluated for the compliance with the defined standards, ECDC will make this information available on line.

The language of the course should be in eitherEnglish or the language of your Countrybut in this latter option it is essential to provide an extended abstract in Englishaccording to the specifications included in annex 2.

We feel that there are many reasons why this call should be attractive to IC/HH training providers:

  1. Potentially to be one of the first providers being recognized by ECDC as compliant with the European IC/HH core competencies;
  2. To participate right from the beginning in a training standardization process that will strengthen the European programmes for prevention and control of HAI;
  3. To have a world-wide visibility,as a training provider;
  4. To contribute to a better definition of the standards forIC/HH courses evaluation process;
  5. To contribute (if the course applicants agree) to the support of the development of IC/HH training standards through the participation in the IC/HH WIKI development;

As we mentioned before the call is now open and will close on the 15th of January 2014.

We kindly ask you to inform all the providers of IC/HH training courses in your Countryabout this call in case they, hopefully, are interested to be actively involved submitting some of their courses and training materials, provided of course that they meet the inclusion/exclusion criteria.

For those interested, more information about the call and the evaluation process can be retrieved contacting the following email address: .

The submissions should be sent to: and to , within midnight (CET) of January the 15th 2014.

We thanks you in advance for attention and hopefully for your contribution.

Sincerelyyours

ECDC

Annex 1 / Flow chart of the IC/HH courses/training initiativesevaluationprocess
Annex 2 / Inclusion and exclusion criteria
Annex 3 / Evaluation criteria