Inspection of the Hospital Infection Control Programs of Health Services by the Health Surveillance: a diagnosis of the situation

Abstract

This study was aimed at recognizing and comparing the inspection conditions of the Hospital Infection Control Programs (HICP) through agents of two Technical Groups of Health Surveillance, in 2002, with the use of questionnaires. The results show that the agents have some knowledge about HI, but most of them did not inspect HICPs, were not trained to do so and did not follow specific guidelines nor used other resources. The most mentioned type of inspection was the inspection of physical structure, followed by HICP meeting records and statistics. It was concluded that the main difficulties in HICP inspection are concentrated on the lack of personnel, resources, motivation and technical capacity. It was also observed in the results a heterogeneity between the groups.