What I love about my work as an advisor is that I participate in many conferences and serve on committees and boards from different sectors of animal health and animal agriculture. In these past years I have seen how much more relevance the concept of preventing infections has gained across sectors (human and animal). I find it captivating when I am able to cross learn from different disciplines and find ways to be innovative when educating about infection prevention, as I discover commonalities that can be cross shared among disciplines.
I believe that leadership is key for the successful implementation of an infection prevention program, where at a hospital, shelter or farm. Leaders must be able to communicate their vision to promote a culture by which infection prevention should be an integral part in providing the best care for animals, people and environment. Leadership by example should be paramount in creating and maintaining the culture of providing patient centered care and improving animal welfare, through among other things proper infection prevention programs. Even more important leaders must constantly listen to feedback from the team, as infection prevention is a dynamic process.
Infection prevention has of course an economic side, as it should be seen as a capital investment that when done well infection prevention has an important role in preventing / minimizing hospital complications and disease in herds, hence decreasing the costs of treating sick animals. Furthermore infection prevention plays a key role as part of an antibiotic stewardship program at the hospital and at the farm, since lessening the chances for animals to get sick would mean less and more judicious use of antibiotics.
As I always mention on my talks on infection prevention, veterinarians and veterinarian technicians should step up and lead by example. As leaders it is paramount to educate, motivate and empower the animal care team on infection prevention. A leadership competency that I think its vital is that of learning agility. As infection prevention leaders we should have the curiosity and adaptability for continuously learning on this ever changing topic and it is our responsibility to communicate the knowledge that we acquire to our team in order to keep them motivated.