Prevention and Control of Infection in Health Care Settings

Students

This FREE on-line course provides all health workers with fundamental knowledge of how to control the cause and spread of infection in hospitals and other settings reliant on superior hygiene standards.

• Develop vitally important skills to prepare you for a role in the sector
• Understand the concepts of decontamination and waste management – and the consequences of not carrying out these processes
• Learn about infection prevention and control in a range of healthcare settings and scenarios to help you contextualise your learning
• Gain industry-relevant knowledge and give your CV a boost

Each unit contains an assessment to demonstrate your knowledge of each subject area. Once you successfully complete all units you will achieve a Level 2 Certificate in the Principles of the Prevention and Control of Infection in Health Care Settings.

Unit 1: The causes and spread of infection

• How infection is caused
• How infection can spread
• The ‘chain of infection’
• The importance of recognising Healthcare Associated Infections (HCAI).

Unit 2: Principles of personal hygiene and health

• Personal hygiene at work
• Handwashing
• Personal protective equipment.

Unit 3: Decontamination, cleaning and waste management

• Maintaining a clean environment
• Roles and responsibilities in decontamination
• The decontamination process
• The sterilisation process
• Handling laundry
• Effective waste management
• Sharps management.

Unit 4: Principles of infection prevention and control

• The purpose of infection control
• Regulations, policy and practice
• Roles and responsibilities in infection control
• Risk assessments
• Principles of infection control procedures.

Course duration

 13 weeks 

Recommended study

10 hours per week

Study requirements

No existing qualification required

What computer software will I need?

• An Internet enabled desktop / laptop PC.
• An active email account.
• Adobe Acrobat Reader or similar PDF reader.
• The ability to read / edit Microsoft Word documents using Word or similar (e.g. LibreOffice).

Note: You will specifically need a recent full version (including Excel & PowerPoint) of Microsoft Office for our IT courses.

Supported web browsers

The following browsers are currently supported which all follow a continuous release policy. We will support the latest 2 major versions of each.

• Microsoft Edge
• Google Chrome
• Mozilla Firefox
• Apple Safari

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