The NOSO workshops provide a discussion platform for the various agencies involved in implementing the NOSO Strategy. In this way, the prevention of healthcare-associated infections can be addressed in the current context and from different perspectives.
These workshops provide a discussion platform for the various agencies involved in the implementation of the NOSO Strategy. The strategy benefits from the input from different viewpoints, enabling the most appropriate measures to be developed. It is essential for such events to be held on a regular basis so as to address the prevention of healthcare-associated infections in the current context, define challenges and review priorities where necessary.
Fourth NOSO workshop in 2024
The fourth NOSO workshop was held on 8 November 2024 at the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH). It was attended by over 100 professionals from hospitals, retirement and nursing homes and by representatives from the cantons and expert associations. Following an introductory update on the current implementation status and other milestones of the NOSO Strategy, Benedetta Allegranzi gave a presentation on the WHO’s global action plan and monitoring framework for infection prevention and control. It emerged that 93 per cent of countries have infection prevention and control (IPC) programmes but fewer than half of them have a budget to implement them.
Moreover, Matthias Schindler from Santésuisse gave an overview of the introduction of national quality agreements under the Federal Health Insurance Act in hospitals and clinics and an outlook for the outpatient sector.
In the group discussions, over 40 representatives of hospitals, expert associations and cantonal departments shared their thoughts on the implementation and interpretation of the operational goals disclosed at the start of the year for reducing healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in Swiss acute care hospitals. Then Walter Zingg of Swissnoso gave a presentation on the use of multimodal prevention strategies. The ensuing discussions focused on how these strategies can be better applied in hospitals.
More than 50 group participants from the field of retirement and nursing homes, their associations, expert groups and cantonal departments discussed the current status of the “NOSO in Alters- und Pflegeheimen” (NOSO in retirement and nursing homes) action plan, which will come out in 2025. Planning the implementation of the action plan was a central discussion topic, for example with regard to the required training provision or the development of cantonal structures and networks.
The summary of the results at the end of the workshop revealed that training will be a major focus area for hospitals and for retirement and nursing homes in the next phase of the NOSO Strategy.
Summaries of the discussion group conclusions plus the plenary and group presentations can be found under “Documents” below.
Last modification 19.12.2024
Contact
Federal Office of Public Health FOPH
Communicable Diseases Division
Infection Control and Control Measures Section
Schwarzenburgstrasse 157
3003
Bern
Switzerland
Tel.
+41 58 463 87 06