Video promotes awareness about safe injection practices

A video depicting an animated man's harrowing experience with the healthcare system, including an avoidable unsafe injection, is the grand prize winner of the third annual Film Festival at the 40th Annual Conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC). The video was created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Safe Injection Practices Coalition (SIPC) as part of their One & Only Campaign to raise awareness among patients and healthcare providers about safe injection practices.

“Safe Injection Practices - How to Do It Right”

According to the CDC, more than 150,000 patients have been impacted by unsafe injection practices since 2001. The CDC has reported 48 outbreaks linked to unsafe injection practices. These outbreaks have included transmission of hepatitis B and C, as well as bacterial infections.

"Safe Injection Practices - How to Do It Right" features the story of "Joe," a man who acquired an infection due to unsafe injection practices. The video follows Joe on a 10-day journey, emphasizing the domino effect of healthcare-associated infections and demonstrating how the CDC's evidence-based guidelines could have helped the character avoid hospital readmission and the potential to spread the infection to others.

The video illustrates the greater implications of Joe's infection and stresses the imperative of following infection control best practices to keep patients safe in all healthcare settings. The video drives home this message by stating: "You only get one opportunity to protect the one and only Joe."

"Given the impact unsafe injection practices have on the spread of infections, we feel that this video can be a great tool to raise awareness among healthcare providers and consumers," said Karen Hoffmann, RN, MS, CIC, APIC 2013 Annual Conference Committee Chair. "We selected this video as the 2013 Film Festival winner for its innovative narrative approach to detailing the importance of safe injection practices."

APIC Annual Conference attendees will have the chance to view the People's Choice Award nominees and vote for their favorite to be presented at the closing plenary on June 10. The nominees, who represent health facilities in Alberta, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota and Mississippi, among others, were chosen out of 33 video submissions.

The nominated videos focus on issues of importance to APIC members and the broader health community, such as hand hygiene, contact precautions, and the prevention of foodborne illnesses.

The APIC 2013 Annual Conference, June 8-10 in Fort Lauderdale, is the most comprehensive infection prevention conference in the world, with 90 educational sessions and workshops led by infection prevention experts and attended by more than 4,500 individuals. The conference aims to provide infection preventionists with tools and strategies that are easily adaptable and can be implemented immediately to improve prevention programs. The Twitter hashtag #APIC2013 is being used for the meeting.