Infection Surveillance in Long-Term Care Facilities

Since the inception of hospital infection control programs several decades ago, surveillance has been an indispensable part of nosocomial infection control efforts. The Study of the Efficacy of Nosocomial Infections (SENIC) found that infection surveillance was one of the essential components of an infection control program associated with successful prevention of nosocomial infections.' The benefits of surveillance in this setting include the generation of useful data to plan infection control/ prevention efforts, the early detection of hospital epidemics, improvement in infection control practices by the informal teaching that takes place during surveillance activities, and improvement in infection control practices by virtue of the Hawthorne effect.