National accreditation and experiences of hospital's infection control specialists - a qualitative study

Hospitals’ infection control departments are an important part of the validation process in terms of process indicators, performance and documentation, which will be reviewed in this study. Thus, examining the experiences of hospital infection control experts in this program’s performance can significantly improve certain parts of the program, as well as assisting planners and policy makers in future decision making.
Data for this study was collected from a sample of 15 experts who were related to the implementation and evaluation of hospital infection control programs. They were interested in participating in the study, which consisted of an in depth semi-structured face-to-face interview, and they also participated in two focus groups of eight and seven people. Consent was obtained in all of the interviews, either group or individual, and using a content analysis approach, meaning units from the participant's statements were extracted and compared with codes and categories, and the main themes and sub-themes were explored.
The results of this study were obtained in the form of 318 codes, 18 sub-themes and seven main categories. Main classes included; Empowerment, Responsibility, Systematic and Services Quality Improvement, Patient Safety, Overwork and Low time interval; Continuity of Learning and Paperwork, each of which had sub-themes related to them.
The results showed that the accreditation process, in addition to the empowerment of personnel, leads to an increased sense of accountability and responsibility.