Internship Hai Infection Surveillance Jobs (NOW HIRING)

The IPC RN serves as a subject matter expert in epidemiology, infection surveillance, outbreak management, and regulatory compliance while promoting a culture of patient safety and quality care throughout the VA Healthcare System.

Duties and responsibilities include:

• Reviews and analyzes existing regulations, standards, and guidelines issued by professional organizations and regulatory agencies to ensure that all medical center Infection Prevention and Control programs maintain full compliance with applicable requirements.
• Applies epidemiologic principles and statistical methods, including risk stratification, to identify target populations, analyze trends and risk factors, and design, implement, and evaluate effective infection prevention and control strategies.
• Uses a systematic, evidence-based approach to surveillance to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of infection prevention and control strategies, ensuring alignment with the organization's goals and objectives.
• Identifies, develops, and implements infection prevention and control strategies across key focus areas, including hand hygiene; cleaning, disinfection, and sterilization; direct and indirect patient care practices; therapeutic and diagnostic procedures and devices; isolation precautions and patient placement; environmental hazards; safe use of patient care products and medical equipment; construction and renovation activities; and preparedness for surges of patients with communicable diseases.
• Performs medical record reviews, data abstraction, and data collection to accurately identify hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) and assess adherence to established HAI prevention measures.
• Performs routine audits of professional practices to assess compliance with established infection prevention and control standards and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Uses appropriate statistical techniques to describe data, calculate rates, and critically evaluate the significance of findings against internal and external benchmarks. Applies these insights to develop, implement, and evaluate targeted infection prevention strategies.
• Reviews and analyzes current scientific literature and publications, recommending new or updated practices and procedures based on the most current, evidence-based infection prevention and control strategies.
• Uses surveillance data to identify the need for practice changes and to propose targeted intervention or performance-improvement projects that enhance infection prevention and control outcomes.
• Provides expert consultation to administration, committees, managers, and staff on matters related to infection prevention and control, offering guidance on best practices, regulatory requirements, and evidence-based strategies.
• Understands adult learning principles, designs effective educational programs, and demonstrates strong presentation skills. Provides orientation to new employees, medical students, and residents.
• Monitors laboratory reports to identify patients with positive multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) for immediate review and investigation, initiates appropriate isolation precautions as needed, and conducts surveillance and investigations using epidemiological principles to prevent and control transmission risks.
• Collaborates with local and state health departments.
• Review and update policies and procedures.
• Serves on medical center committees to consult and educate about current infection prevention and control data.

VA offers a comprehensive total rewards package:

• Competitive salary, regular salary increases, potential for performance awards
• 50 days of paid time off per year (26 days of annual leave, 13 days of sick leave, 11 paid Federal holidays per year)
• Traditional federal pension (5 years vesting) and federal 401K with up to 5% in contributions by VA
• Federal health/vision/dental/term life/long-term care (many federal insurance programs can be carried into retirement)
• 1 full and unrestricted license from any US State or territory
• Full-time; 8:00am-4:30pm or as determined by your supervisor.
• Not Available
• This is not a virtual position.
• Not Available
• Not Authorized