What is NISPAC?
The National Infection Surveillance Program for Aged Care (NISPAC) aims to reduce infections and improve antimicrobial use associated with aged care services by:
- Monitoring and reporting infections and antimicrobial use
- Promoting best practice via education and support of all staff responsible for infection prevention and control and antimicrobial stewardship programs
- Enhancing quality care in RACHs via standardised and data-driven program delivery.
NISPAC is overseen by the Victorian Healthcare Associated Infection Surveillance System (VICNISS) Coordinating Centre. The NISPAC Support Team includes staff specialised in Infectious Diseases, Infection Prevention and Control, Epidemiology, Statistics and Information Technology.
What are the NISPAC surveillance modules?
Listed below are outcome and process surveillance modules currently or soon available for NISPAC participating residential aged care homes.
| Category | Module | Methodology | Status |
| Staff vaccination | Influenza |
Period prevalence |
Established |
| Significant organism events | Laboratory Identified Multi-Drug Resistant Organisms | Incidence | Established |
| Clostridioides difficile infection | New | ||
| Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus infection | Established | ||
| Vancomycin Resistant Enterococci infection | Established | ||
| Occupational Health and Safety | Occupational Exposure | Continuous Incidence | Under development |
| Resident vaccination | Herpes Zoster | Point prevalence | Established |
| Influenza | Established | ||
| Pneumococcal | Established | ||
| COVID-19 | New | ||
| Respiratory Syncytial Virus | Under development | ||
| Infection | Urinary Tract infection | Continuous Incidence | New |
The Aged Care National Antimicrobial Prescribing Survey (NAPS) can be accessed via the NISPAC platform. Aged Care NAPS is a single day survey that monitors infections and assesses antimicrobial use. It is overseen by the National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship and VICNISS Coordinating Centre.
NISPAC data collection forms are to be used to collect all required data. Instructions, data collection forms and training webinars for each surveillance module are available to registered users via the NISPAC portal.
How is the is data transferred to NISPAC?
Data submission/transfer is via the NISPAC platform using web-based data collection forms (web-forms).
NISPAC collates the data and provides benchmarking reports to the participating RACHs. These reports are accessible by authorised persons only.
Pilot NISPAC Evaluation
Participating RACHs asked Is there anything else you would like the NISPAC team to know?, as part of the pilot NISPAC evaluation, reported:
- You have all been very helpful.
- Excellent program, thank you for the support. Sorry I couldn't dedicate more time this time around, next time hopefully I will have more time to dedicate.
- Weekly zoom or webinars would be handy to keep us on track, just Q & A session, early in morning where we can all chat and add things, like a conversation for ideas and maintaining engagement. Weekly I think is important and effective in my past experience.
- You have all been very helpful.
- No thanks.
- No.
- I felt well supported, thank-you.
- Unfortunately, I was away during the original webinar and also in choosing what we would report on so I think this hindered me.
- You have all been very helpful.
- Enjoyed participating. Was informative.
- We don't get extra staffing resources to complete the modules.
- Difficulty in collecting data directly related to accessing information using our current clinical systems. Had to access different data sources to complete one or more of modules
- Everyone in NISPAC members were very helpful; IF it is possible to make NISPAC reduces our workload rather than add to.
- Thank you for the experience to participate in this pilot project, I have learned a lot
- I found since my hours were cut I really didn’t have time to do my own work therefore didn’t get the most out of the program I am sorry.
- No - But thank you for all of your assistance!
- Extremely important project for aged care, should be mandatory.
- The NISPAC team has been very supportive and responsive; The team was very responsive, offered assistance whenever required and very easy to work with.
- I think it is a great idea to have a national surveillance program where we can benchmark our position with others and have a standard to aim for.
- The work was more than I expected, but it prompted some further investigation and policy development around resident vaccination.