Infection Prevention Week 2026: Past, Present, Protected
Past, Present, Protected. In this year’s International Infection Prevention Week (IIPW) theme, the final word is the one that matters most.
For much of this field’s history, expertise in infection prevention and control was preserved and shared through direct handoff from one person to the next. At many facilities, that quiet system no longer functions effectively, and staffing patterns matter more than technology in explaining why.
IIPW’s 2026 artwork shows pillars of infection prevention and control, moving from a plague doctor to a Nightingale-era nurse, then to a mid-century laboratory scientist, and finally to an infection preventionist standing next to an AI display. It’s a good arc showing part of our history, but what the image cannot reveal is the way any of them actually learned the job.
How did infection preventionists acquire this knowledge?
For most, by working with someone who already had it.
Dedicated infection control nursing positions appeared in the late 1950s and early 1960s. APIC was established in 1972. In the early 1980s, certification arrived through CBIC. Even as those milestones accumulated, the basic transfer process remained much the same: you entered the role, and a colleague with more experience guided you through the cases you handled incorrectly.
And that worked. That model helped produce the generation that created the field’s evidence base, including the CDC’s SENIC project, which showed that organized surveillance led by a trained infection preventionist measurably lowered infections. Yet apprenticeship depends on having an experienced person physically present, on enough time for cases to build, and on enough continuity to sustain both.
Why doesn’t that model (alone) work today?
Because many facilities now have no one for a new IP to learn beside. Critical access hospitals, behavioral health facilities, rehabilitation hospitals, and ambulatory surgery centers often depend on a single infection preventionist, or on someone doing the work as only part of another position. When that person departs, the informal curriculum departs too.
The work itself has also changed. Today, for example, NHSN surveillance definitions change every year, and the numbers affect Medicare payment. Our longitudinal research showed that coding accuracy followed reinforced experience, not simply time in the job. An IP with twenty years and no recalibration is not necessarily more accurate than someone with three years plus annual structured practice.
What happened when we tried to put it in writing?
When our team began developing validated case scenarios, we assumed the difficult part would be creating questions challenging enough to matter. It wasn’t. Item analysis revealed that scenarios authored by expert infection preventionists did not always elicit the response their creators expected from IPs at different experience levels. Some contained ambiguity that the writers themselves could not detect.
Before the test bank could validate anyone, it had to be validated.
I still keep thinking about that result. If experienced IPs writing intentionally clear teaching cases can introduce ambiguity without realizing it, then the knowledge we think we are handing down informally is probably less complete than it seems.
What does “protected” mean in practice?
Recorded instead of merely remembered. Validated instead of presumed.
Written case scenarios with known answers, not stories from the field
Observed agreement among reviewers, so drift becomes visible
Competency evidence that remains after someone leaves
Scheduled recalibration, because the definitions do not stay fixed
None of that takes the place of mentorship. It makes mentorship repeatable, which is important when one person is covering three buildings.
One thing to try this week
Identify three things your program does well that live only in one person’s mind. Then document one of them properly. Not on a sticky note — as a real procedure that another person could follow without needing to ask questions.
Most teams I have worked with can make that list in about ten minutes. The uneasy part is usually how quickly the ten minutes pass.
Continuing to move it forward
The generations in this year’s IIPW artwork are linked by more than sequence and time. Each one received something, and each one had to decide what would be handed on. And that is the part we still need to approach deliberately.
IP&MA develops and validates the tools that make surveillance competency transferable: case-based training, interrater reliability assessment, and competency validation for teams that want to know where they actually stand. Request a discovery call to discuss what that would look like in your program.