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Knowing that research drives practice, which then impacts patient outcomes, the infection prevention and healthcare epidemiology is striving to improve its embrace of implementation science (defined by Eccles and Mittman as "the scientific study of methods to promote the systematic uptake of research findings and other evidence-based practices into routine practice"). Although federal agencies and professional societies have been churning out guidelines and standards for decades, practitioners have been struggling with what should inform daily practice and how the evidence should become accepted practice.

Annual competencies come and annual competencies go while each member of the nursing staff remains competently employed for at least one more year.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and its Healthcare Infection Control Practices Advisory Committee (HICPAC) have updated a guideline, "Guidelines for the Prevention of Intravascular Catheter-Related Infections," designed to help practitioners eliminate bloodstream infections in patients with intravenous catheters, considered to be deadly and costly healthcare-associated infections (HAIs).