Guidelines for preventing respiratory illness in older adults aged 60 years and above living in long-term care: A rapid review of clinical practice guidelines

Patricia Rios; Amruta Radhakrishnan; Sonia M. Thomas; Nazia Darvesh; Sharon E. Straus; Andrea C. Tricco

Audits are commonly used in clinical medical and nursing practice as part of continuous quality improvement, and may be an appropriate method by which to conduct a debrief. Australian public health practitioners and researchers have proposed a guide for an outbreak audit process, with a framework for deciding which outbreak investigations to audit, an approach for conducting a successful audit, and a template for trigger questions. This tool enables agencies such as RCFs to assess their outbreak response against best practice. If a formal debrief or an audit is undertaken, the OMT should arrange a meeting between key RCF staff, PHU staff, and other relevant agencies, to review the course and management of the outbreak. The purpose of this meeting is to identify what worked well, and what could be improved for future outbreaks. For preference, this meeting should occur within two weeks of the outbreak being declared over. A debrief provides the opportunity to identify strengths and weaknesses in outbreak response and investigation processes, and provide information to help improve the management of similar outbreaks in the future. It should involve all members of the OMT and 209 any others who participated in the response to the outbreak.