American Nurses Association and CDC Announce Partnership to Improve Infection Prevention Education for Nurses

The American Nurses Association (ANA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have recently partnered to create the Nursing Infection Control Education (NICE) Network. NICE Network members come from 20 specialty nursing organizations holding memberships with ANA in collaboration to empower nurses to protect themselves and their patients from infections.

Members will work together to develop infection prevention and control training materials which will assist nurses with how to handle and contain emerging infectious diseases including Ebola and Zika virus. An emerging infection disease is defined as a disease that is newly recognized in an area or that affects a large population or geographic area. Other recent infectious diseases include severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), H1N1 influenza, and West Nile virus. These diseases make it crucial that healthcare providers be able to rapidly detect and contain emerging infectious diseases and contain antibiotic resistance threats before an emerging disease becomes a global pandemic.

ANA will serve as the primary contractor of the project which is scheduled to run through May 31, 2018. The project will provide nurses with real-time, tailored infection control training critical to effective response to infectious disease. The main objectives for the project include:

Identifying infection control-related training needs
Developing educational tools and outreach materials for registered nurses and nursing-related professionals

In response to the new partnership, ANA President Pamela F. Cipriano, PhD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, discussed ANA’s role in infectious disease control:

“Nurses have played a critical role in educating the public and other health care workers about controlling and preventing the spread of the Ebola and Zika viruses. Like the CDC, we recognize that nurses are on the front lines of delivering care and should be fully equipped to tackle emerging threats to protect themselves and the people they serve.”

To learn more about ANA’s partnership with the CDC, visit here. To review the CDC’s infection control and prevention procedures, visit https://www.cdc.gov/hai/index.html.