Infection Prevention & Control (ACSQHC Standards)

How the programme is structured and assessed, and the idea the whole thing rests on: the Standard binds the ORGANISATION, which can only satisfy it through the workforce. Both halves matter - you are not personally accountable for the system, and the system cannot function without you.

Also here: what a system course is and who needs one; the four things completing this course does not establish; and how this programme relates to Hand Hygiene & PPE (OBA-HHP-2026) and Aseptic Technique (OBA-AT-2026), which teach the practice behind three of the nineteen actions. Read that comparison before you buy more than one.

In this section: the module slide deck, the student learner guide, and the knowledge check. The check is formative - not graded, no attempt limit - and the rationale on every option is the content.

The whole map in one pass. The Standard's five-part stated intention, its three criteria, its thirteen items and all nineteen actions - and which module of this course carries each one.

The deliverable is a reading skill: an action is a list, not a sentence. Subject, verb, limbs, and what would prove it. Action 3.10 has four limbs; Action 3.16 has eight. Also the precautionary clause - a licence in writing to act ahead of certainty when evidence is emerging - and what applies to services not accredited to NSQHS at all.

In this section: the module slide deck, the student learner guide, and the knowledge check. The check is formative - not graded, no attempt limit - and the rationale on every option is the content.

Actions 3.01 to 3.04, and the single most useful idea in the programme: the hierarchy of controls, which the Standard names three separate times.

Education is level four of five, above only PPE. An improvement plan whose every action is education and training has chosen the second-weakest control available and called it a response. Also: Action 3.02's clause requiring the workforce to have ACCESS TO EQUIPMENT, which is what to quote when the dispenser is at the door; Action 3.03's seven limbs including the one naming consumers; and how to write a risk register row that survives.

In this section: the module slide deck, the student learner guide, and the knowledge check. The check is formative - not graded, no attempt limit - and the rationale on every option is the content.

Action 3.05 has eight limbs and only two of them are about collecting anything. The others concern what comes in, what is done with it, who is told - and one that surprises everybody: the organisation must monitor its own RESPONSIVENESS to the risks surveillance identifies.

The national systems and what each is for. Process, outcome and balancing measures. And the five questions to ask before believing any rate - including the ascertainment trap, where a service that starts looking harder watches its numbers rise while its actual risk falls. Services have abandoned effective screening programmes over that misreading.

In this section: the module slide deck, the student learner guide, and the knowledge check. The check is formative - not graded, no attempt limit - and the rationale on every option is the content.

Actions 3.06 to 3.09 read as a system rather than as a technique - the practice is taught in OBA-HHP-2026. What is left is not small: most of what goes wrong with precautions in Australian services is a risk assessment done once, a placement decision made by bed pressure, and a patient who was never told what would end it.

Three clauses carry the module. Re-evaluated during care - four words in Action 3.08 that most services cannot evidence. The risks to the wellbeing of patients in isolation, named in their own right. And the nature AND DURATION of precautions in Action 3.09, which is the most commonly omitted piece of information in the subject.

In this section: the module slide deck, the student learner guide, and the knowledge check. The check is formative - not graded, no attempt limit - and the rationale on every option is the content.

Actions 3.10 and 3.11 as organisational requirements. The technique behind both is taught at length in the two practice courses; this module asks what the ORGANISATION must have, audit and act on - and between them these two actions have eight limbs, six of which concern what happens after somebody has been taught something.

Three of Action 3.10's four limbs are about what follows the audit. Action 3.11's first limb - identify the procedures in which aseptic technique applies - is a piece of work most services have never completed, and the other three depend on it. Plus the distinction the whole course turns on: training completed is not competence assessed, and the assessor who has never been assessed.

In this section: the module slide deck, the student learner guide, and the knowledge check. The check is formative - not graded, no attempt limit - and the rationale on every option is the content.

The shortest action in the Standard, and why that brevity is misleading: one sentence of reference makes the whole of the Guidelines' invasive device content an accreditation requirement, and moves the evidence into the actions around it.

The device life cycle, and why most device infections are acquired during maintenance rather than at insertion - which is how excellent insertion bundle compliance coexists with a rising rate. The highest-yield question is whether the device is still needed, and the module is honest about why that advice usually fails: removal costs somebody something, nobody owns it, and the chart does not ask.

In this section: the module slide deck, the student learner guide, and the knowledge check. The check is formative - not graded, no attempt limit - and the rationale on every option is the content.

Actions 3.13 and 3.14 - ten limbs between them, and the area clinical staff are most likely to treat as somebody else's department. Products must be listed on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods and used per the manufacturer's instructions at recommended frequencies, which is why this course prints no contact times or dilutions.

Cleaning versus disinfection versus sterilisation, and the four audit methods - visual, fluorescent marker, ATP and microbiological - which measure four different things. Then Action 3.14's five risk domains: equipment, workplace amenity areas, construction and refurbishment, linen, and novel infections. The staff tea room is named in an accreditation standard, and it is almost never audited.

In this section: the module slide deck, the student learner guide, and the knowledge check. The check is formative - not graded, no attempt limit - and the rationale on every option is the content.

Action 3.17's three limbs. The Spaulding classification and what each category requires. AS/NZS 4187 and 4815, and where the manufacturer's instructions for use sit beside them - where they differ, the more restrictive governs, and a device whose instructions your service cannot meet should not be in use.

The middle limb is the module: a traceability process linking the patient, the procedure AND the items. That link is what makes a recall possible, and a service without it must choose between over-notifying and under-notifying. Plus single-use devices, which nobody may authorise reprocessing locally, and where failures actually originate - almost never in the steriliser.

In this section: the module slide deck, the student learner guide, and the knowledge check. The check is formative - not graded, no attempt limit - and the rationale on every option is the content.

Actions 3.15 and 3.16 - eleven limbs, and the section where the Standard treats staff as people who can be harmed and as a route of transmission at once. Risk-based immunisation under the Australian Immunisation Handbook plus jurisdictional requirements, which differ and are therefore not stated here.

Action 3.16 is the largest action in the Standard and one of its limbs is remarkable: the organisation must PROMOTE NON-ATTENDANCE at work. A service whose rostering, leave or casualisation makes attending while unwell the rational choice has an infection prevention problem, not a personal responsibility problem. Outbreak management lives here too - six stages, and recognition depends on the least senior people in the building.

In this section: the module slide deck, the student learner guide, and the knowledge check. The check is formative - not graded, no attempt limit - and the rationale on every option is the content.

The third criterion, in two actions, plus the eight quality statements of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Clinical Care Standard. What a programme must HAVE under Action 3.18 - including a formulary with restriction rules and approval processes - and what it must DO under 3.19.

Quality statement 1 comes first for a reason: a patient with a life-threatening condition due to suspected infection receives an appropriate antimicrobial immediately, without waiting for results. Stewardship is not restraint. And six of the eight quality statements have a direct nursing contribution - cultures before the first dose, the allergy history, the indication and review date, the intravenous-to-oral switch, prophylaxis timing, and the conversation with the patient.

In this section: the module slide deck, the student learner guide, and the knowledge check. The check is formative - not graded, no attempt limit - and the rationale on every option is the content.

The assessment brief first: what is graded, what is not, and what the certificate evidences. Then the case study assessment - five unfolding scenarios across 25 branching decisions, completion required and not graded, with feedback on every option including the plausible wrong ones.

The summative assessment is 60 single-best-answer items blueprinted across all eleven modules, with a pass mark of 80 per cent and two attempts. Printable versions of both are here for offline use and accessibility; the assessment of record is completed in the platform, which scores it and issues the certificate.

Five optional tools, deliberately excluded from the claimable CPD figure because they are optional. Complete them and you may claim the time as additional self-directed CPD.

The action finder drills which action and which limb a real situation belongs to - the commonest accreditation failure is answering the wrong one. The hierarchy of controls sorter classifies proposed controls, with paired items showing the same hazard addressed two levels apart. Evidence or intention asks what an artefact actually establishes. The surveillance reader presents figures as they arrive in meetings. And the scope self-check sorts every activity against your own role.

Three fillable instruments, and the first is the one this whole programme exists to produce.

The Standard 3 gap analysis tool takes all nineteen actions with the evidence you hold, the gap, an owner and a date. The outbreak readiness check is answered when nothing is happening - a readiness check completed during an outbreak is an incident report - and it asks the honest questions, including what happens to a casual worker's pay and who decides when the usual decision-maker is on leave. The evidence portfolio index records where each artefact lives, who holds it and when it was last refreshed, because evidence assembled for the last cycle evidences the last cycle.

The reflective workbook is fillable and is your CPD evidence - the NMBA expects registered and enrolled nurses to hold their own record of what was learned and how it applies to practice. Nothing in it is submitted or marked.

The scope of practice card is one page, designed to be printed and kept where you work - it carries the hierarchy of controls, the item map and the raise-it-now list. The further reading directory lists the Australian organisations behind this content with live links and a currency note.