The terms ‘incident’ and ‘Incident Management Team’ (IMT) are used as generic terms to cover both incidents and outbreaks

A healthcare infection incident may be:

An exceptional infection episode

• a single case of rare infection that has severe outcomes for an individual AND has major implications for others (patients, staff and/or visitors), the organisation or wider public health for example, high consequence infectious disease (HCID) OR other rare infections such as XDR-TB, botulism, polio, rabies, or diphtheria.

See literature review for Infectious Diseases of High Consequence (IDHC)

A healthcare infection exposure incident

• Exposure of patients, staff, public to a possible infectious agent as a result of a healthcare system failure or a near miss e.g. ventilation, water or decontamination incidents.

A healthcare associated infection outbreak

• Two or more linked cases with the same infectious agent associated with the same healthcare setting over a specified time period.

or

• A higher-than-expected number of cases of HAI in a given healthcare area over a specified time period.

A healthcare infection data exceedance

• A greater than expected rate of infection compared with the usual background rate for the place and time where the incident has occurred.

A healthcare infection near miss incident

• An incident which had the potential to expose patients to an infectious agent but did not e.g. decontamination failure.

A healthcare infection incident should be suspected if there is:

• a single case of an infection for which there have previously been no cases in the facility (e.g. infection with a multidrug-resistant organism (MDRO) with unusual resistance patterns or a post-procedure infection with an unusual organism)

Resources

Further information can be found in the literature review Healthcare infection incidents and outbreaks in Scotland.