Organizational leadership is critical in all healthcare settings to ensure effective outbreak prevention and control. While outbreaks will continue to occur, many can be prevented or have their impact reduced through intentional, knowledgeable, and rapid management. Outbreak investigations will eliminate bias and assumptions and will help identify a source using scientific methods. While the source of the outbreak may seem obvious by casual observation, initial assumptions are often wrong. ![]() The reason for conducting a thorough investigation is to find the source of the outbreak and implement both immediate and long-term control measures. Outbreaks may occur for a number of reasons including: introduction and transmission of an infectious disease within the healthcare site, lapses in infection control practices, contaminated or defective products or devices, and establishment of a reservoir for a pathogen somewhere in the healthcare facility. Any significant increase over baseline endemic rates should result in an investigation. This is the reason for conducting surveillance. To identify an outbreak, baseline endemic rates (a rate of a disease that is regularly found among a population) must be available for comparison. A small rise in events may be referred to as a cluster, and both clusters and outbreaks require prompt investigation and management. Outbreaks are defined as an increase over the expected occurrence of an event.
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