eBulletin October 2002 Edition 1
Welcome to the first VICNISS eBulletin
The purpose of this communication is to ensure all participants in Phase 1 of the VICNISS program are kept abreast of developments
and milestones in the project.
The VICNISS eBulletin will be issued monthly. If you wish to be taken off the email distribution list, please reply to this email
with ‘unsubscribe’ in the subject heading. Alternatively, if you have been forwarded this email and would like to be included
in our email correspondence, please contact us.
VICNISS is a new and ambitious project, and we are conscious of ensuring that participating hospitals are kept informed.
We welcome your feedback.
Phase 1 Update
There are several important issues that I need to mention regarding Phase 1.
Delays in development of the eICAT software have led to postponement of commencement of Phase 1 of data collection. We are keen to provide
user-friendly software for data entry, analysis and reporting, with fields comparable with US NNIS methods, and efficient reporting.
Despite the software not being finalised, we feel it is important for us to commence data collection which will now occur on 11th
November 2002.
- VICNISS Coordinating Centre staff have been in contact with hospital Infection Control staff to outline proposed changes until
we have the new software available. These include:
- Hospitals using the old version of eICAT software (version 3.3) will be encouraged to continue to do so for surgical site surveillance.
- Hospitals currently using their own software for surveillance, using NNIS methods are encouraged to continue to do so.
- The remaining Phase 1 hospitals are encouraged to use paper-based data collection, using forms supplied by VICNISS, until the new
software is available. If these hospitals prefer, they may use eICAT (version 3.3), which we can supply, until new software is
available. Coordinating Centre staff will be available to assist with the loading of this software, and details of surveillance methods.
- Hospitals that had planned to undertake ICU surveillance may choose whether or not to proceed until new software is available.
If they wish to contribute ICU data in Phase 1, they may use their existing software, or, if new to ICU surveillance, paper-based
data entry forms provided by the Coordinating Centre.
- Details of surveillance methods, data transfer to the Coordinating Centre, interim arrangements for data analysis and reports will
be posted on our website at www.vicniss.org.au, and can be obtained by contacting the VICNISS Coordinating Centre contact person for your hospital.
We are committed to establishing an effective standardised surveillance system for hospital-Acquired infections for all Victorian public
hospitals. We appreciate that the initial arrangements present additional challenges, but we are also excited that we are now commencing a
surveillance system that will give us state-wide aggregated rates and opportunities to further improve infection prevention in Victoria’s
public hospitals. The Phase 1 hospitals are the pioneers of this project, so please bear with us in this start up phase.
Kind Regards,
Dr Michel Richards, Director VICNISS Coordinating Centre
