Q&A: Maintain Vigilance Over the Smallest Details

Q&A with Katelyn Harms, MPH, CIC, infection prevention program manager, on a pivotal patient experience that shaped her focus

What does your role as infection prevention program manager in the Performance Improvement Department entail?
I’ve been in the infection prevention program here at UnityPoint Health - Meriter for about 12 years, where I split my time between doing disease surveillance and managing a lot of our quality improvement projects. I do a lot of work with our regulatory compliance, making sure our hospital meets all its needs for achieving accreditation. I also monitor a lot of patient safety data. I’m really a good conduit for communication from our infection prevention team to our employees and to our public health partners who are external to the hospital.

What made you want to pursue a career in infection prevention?
My undergrad was in medical microbiology and immunology. I really loved working at a bench under a microscope, but I wanted to expand my horizons. I thought I wanted to go into public health, so I took a year off after I graduated and worked for the state health department in the tuberculosis program. But working for the state health department felt a little detached; I wasn’t seeing patients, and I wasn’t seeing the community that we helped. I went to a talk about nosocomial or hospital-acquired infections, and that was all it took for me to realize my calling.

Was there an event that was formative to your development as an infection preventionist?
Early on in my career, there was a construction site down the hall from our ICU. We were monitoring the site every day, making sure it was a negative pressure space and making sure everything was in line with our infection control requirements. We thought we were doing everything really well until a patient down the hall acquired an HA-aspergillus fungal infection and died. We dug a little deeper and learned the construction site had an external elevator, and when that door to the outside world opened, it became a wind tunnel. It was that one odd element where if you weren’t there at the right time, you wouldn’t have caught it. I remember this being a really pivotal moment in my own career, because while it felt like I walked around checking really mundane things, those small things have a profound impact on our patient outcomes.

What do you love most about your field?
I love that I get to work with everybody in the hospital. I speak with everyone from the nursing staff to valet services to our dietary folks who deliver food trays. I love the variety of relationships we get to have from this seat. OSM