When an emerging pathogen intersects with the daily care routines, best practices are quickly disseminated and implemented through collaboration. This synergy enables swift adaptation to evolving challenges, ensuring that infection prevention is not an afterthought but a foundational element woven through every layer of care delivery.
The Role of Interdisciplinary Teams in Infection Prevention and Control Across Acute and Long-Term Care Settings
Infection prevention cannot succeed in silos. From acute care hospitals to long-term care facilities, interdisciplinary teams bring diverse expertise together, transforming safety from an individual responsibility into a shared culture. It’s time for leaders to champion collaboration, empower every role, and embed IPC into daily care delivery.
“The strength of the team is each individual member. The strength of each member is the team.” — Phil Jackson, American former professional basketball player, coach, and executive
Interdisciplinary Teams
It is no secret that infection prevention in health care has become a true team effort. As in team sports, each person has a specific role, purpose, and specialty in interdisciplinary health care teams. Gone are the days when a single infection preventionist (IP) was expected to manage everything alone; now, it takes a mix of people from different backgrounds, each bringing something unique to the table. Whether in a bustling hospital or a long-term care (LTC) facility, these interdisciplinary teams are the heartbeat of modern infection prevention and control (IPC). They do not just solve problems as they arise; they help build a culture where everyone feels responsible for safety and infection prevention.
Interdisciplinary care teams harness the knowledge and skills of professionals from diverse backgrounds, fostering collaboration that enhances patient outcomes and supports holistic approaches to health. In IPC settings, this collaborative outlook becomes even more essential. By integrating perspectives from medicine, nursing, pharmacy, therapy, environmental services, and beyond, these teams are uniquely equipped to identify risks, implement effective interventions, and promote a culture of safety.
Such collaboration is not simply about assembling a group of specialists but cultivating a shared commitment to patient well-being. Open communication, mutual respect, and continual knowledge exchange are the hallmarks of high-functioning teams, transforming isolated expertise into coordinated action. This dynamic enables teams to respond swiftly to emerging challenges, streamline care processes, and ensure that acute and LTC environments remain places of healing and security.
When an emerging pathogen intersects with the daily care routines, best practices are quickly disseminated and implemented through collaboration. This synergy enables swift adaptation to evolving challenges, ensuring that infection prevention is not an afterthought but a foundational element woven through every layer of care delivery.
Acute Care Setting
Traditional interdisciplinary teams in the acute health care setting are collaborative groups of professionals from diverse disciplines who work together to address the full spectrum of a patient’s acute needs with the goal of rapid stabilization, medical management, and discharge planning. Acute care interdisciplinary team members1 may include physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dietitians, behavioral health specialists, and therapists, such as physical therapists, occupational therapists, and speech-language pathologists.
Interdisciplinary teams typically meet in a daily huddle to integrate their professional expertise and develop a unified, patient-centered approach. Commonly, interdisciplinary teams discuss core components of patient care, such as the patient care plan, communication strategies, and patient and family member involvement as part of the decision-making plans.
Acute care settings benefit from rapid access to diagnostics, advanced surveillance systems, and structural support for high-risk patients. But despite these assets, outbreaks such as central line–associated bloodstream infections or Clostridioides difficile can escalate quickly without coordinated staff engagement. For example, a hospital facing a surge of C difficile infections could leverage interdisciplinary huddles to guide targeted interventions. IPs track cases and liaise with public health authorities, whereas nurse managers reinforce contact precautions and recalibrate workflows. Pharmacists may review antimicrobial usage and suggest alternatives to limit microbiome disruption. Environmental services (EVS) may deploy bleach-based cleaning protocols and validate efficacy via adenosine triphosphate testing. This level of collaboration accelerates containment and restores confidence among clinical teams.
LTC Setting
In comparison, the interdisciplinary care team structure within the LTC setting may look somewhat like the acute care setting, with some key modifications.2 The participants may include geriatricians, primary care physicians, nursing staff, case managers, chaplains, and activity coordinators. Instead of rapid stabilization and discharge planning, as is the goal in acute care, the goal in the LTC setting may include a more relationship-based approach to ensuring sustained quality of life, chronic condition management, and end-of-life planning.2
Unlike acute care hospitals, LTC facilities are not only treatment centers; they serve as homes. That distinction makes the environment of care more complex and personal. The approach to IPC has shifted from isolated efforts to deeply collaborative ones. Where once IPs carried the burden of protocol enforcement, today’s most effective IPC strategies within the LTC setting reflect robust interdisciplinary teamwork, integrating expertise from nursing, medicine, pharmacy, environmental services, dietary, and operations.
LTC facilities present different IPC considerations.2 Residents often live in proximity for months or years, and IPC must align with relationship-based care rather than episodic intervention. Norovirus outbreaks, for example, may emerge subtly and then become rampant. Direct care staff are typically the first to notice, prompting coordination with recreation teams to modify activities and dietary services to adjust hydration practices. EVS intensifies surface cleaning, whereas family liaisons engage visitors and support education around symptom monitoring and precautionary measures. Because cognitive and physical impairments are common in these populations, IPC strategies may require adaptation, emphasizing accessibility, repetition, and person-centered engagement.
Regardless of the specific care setting, a common thread must be woven as a core component of the interdisciplinary team. This common thread is IPC representation. This crucial component can effectively contribute to the interdisciplinary team’s input, ensuring that proper IPC protocols are followed and patients and residents are safe.
Challenges and Solutions
Interdisciplinary teamwork is not without its challenges. Staff members are under significant pressure, frequently experiencing time restrictions. IPC education and training sessions can seem unnecessary unless they are incorporated into clinical rounds or safety briefings. Solutions must be identified to help staff to become successful team members.
Interdisciplinary teams benefit from technology. Faster reactions and shared situational awareness are made possible by visual dashboards that show infection rates, cluster mapping, and antibiotic consumption. Employees from different departments can quickly report problems or ask for advice on adopting and implementing secure messaging apps and real-time documentation platforms. Transparent communication is promoted by these techniques, particularly during dynamic situations like outbreaks or preventive lockdowns. Another helpful tool is simulation-based learning. Teams develop empathy and cross-role understanding, along with muscle memory, when they practice putting on and taking off personal protective equipment or reacting to isolation scenarios together.
Collaboration can be more successful with IPC role-specific training. Crucial touchpoints include ancillary departments such as transporters, building maintenance, and food service. Including nonclinical professionals in IPC training and instruction is vital. Job-specific microlearning courses, which provide pertinent information without overburdening nonclinical workers, can fill identified training gaps. To maintain continuity, high-turnover facilities, particularly those in LTC, must invest in IPC onboarding. Mentorship partnerships, in which seasoned employees instruct new hires on IPC details unique to their work and environment, are one viable tactic.
Recognition initiatives strengthen IPC objectives and raise spirits. These initiatives remind all staff members that their work is important, whether they are commemorating staff milestones, zero-infection weeks, or innovative peer interventions. Crucially, the most effective recognition initiatives involve participation. Teams assist in defining metrics, including the decrease in catheter-associated urinary tract infections, and decide how to recognize accomplishments, such as through town hall messages, team lunches, or bulletin boards.
Summary
Opportunities for reciprocal learning are highlighted by the comparison of interdisciplinary teams in acute and LTC. Whereas LTC is excellent at integrating IPC into human connections and community standards, acute care thrives on quick diagnostics, organized responses, and consolidated data. Acute facilities might take more person-centered approaches from LTC, like consistent staffing and individualized IPC instruction. On the other hand, acute care’s strict data management procedures and outbreak modeling frameworks can be advantageous in LTC settings. The end effect is a hybrid strategy that capitalizes on the advantages of both environments, being extremely responsive and intensely personal.
The COVID-19 pandemic, not too long ago, highlighted the importance of urgent interdisciplinary IPC teams. Strong communication loops and decentralized decision-making were more common in the best-performing facilities. To strike a balance between infection risk and emotional wellness, nurses collaborated with housekeeping workers; maintenance teams adjusted ventilation systems, and recreational therapists updated activity plans. These experiences reaffirmed one important lesson: IPC cannot function well in silos. It calls for dialogue, adaptability, and teamwork. Interdisciplinary IPC must develop in tandem with health care in the future. A culture shift is necessary to address this perception. Leaders must emphasize that IPC is a group duty and normalize involvement from all positions.
The growth of multidrug-resistant pathogens, home-based care models, and telehealth all call for evidence-based IPC techniques adaptable to the specific setting. Interdisciplinary teams stand for more than just operational effectiveness; they embody the idea that ensuring IPC is a collective effort rather than a responsibility assigned to someone. Through reciprocal respect, role appreciation, and collaborative efforts, health care providers establish settings where infection prevention is integrated into every aspect of daily life. Success stems from the same source, whether in a memory care unit or an intensive care unit: the interdisciplinary team’s strength.
References
Jankowski M, Reynolds E, Montgomery E, Burke J, Aguilar J. Collaboration, consistency, and communication—oh my: decreasing hospital-acquired infections in a tertiary hospital’s medical surgical intensive care unit. Am J Infect Control. 2023;51(suppl 7):S31. doi:10.1016/j.ajic.2023.04.052
O’Donnell M, Harris T, Horn T, et al. Sustained increase in resident meal time hand hygiene through an interdisciplinary intervention engaging long-term care facility residents and staff. Am J Infect Control. 2015;43(2):162-164. doi:10.1016/j.ajic.2014.10.018
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