Activities that Stick!
Studies have shown that if people are asked to come up with their own ideas, the ideas ‘stick’ much better. So you can ask your staff to brainstorm their own solutions to infection control issues, such as:
- How to ensure all staff to clean their hands
- How to remind people which kinds of encounters require hand hygiene
- How to encourage patient/resident hand hygiene
You might be surprised at what they come up with (and prize incentives for best ideas help, too!)
Toolkit with 20 Activities
PICNet’s Infection Control Week Planning and Communications Toolkit has lots of great activity ideas that you can use throughout the year… not just for Infection Control Week! Download the document to read all 20 activity ideas.
Here are just a few of them:
Songs, Videos, and Flash Mobs
Get your staff involved in creative projects like:
- Infection Control videos – there are some great ones here
- Flash mobs – watch a great example!
Handwashing Demonstrations
With poster paint and gloves
Supplies
• 1 or 2 bottles of poster paint – bright red works well against blue gloves
• Surgical gloves (assorted sizes)
- Have everyone put on surgical gloves, then squirt about 5mL of poster paint into each person’s hand
- Have them cover their eyes and “wash” their hands with the paint, as if it is hand sanitizer
- When they open their eyes, they will see which areas of their hands they missed
- Next, have them try to remove the gloves without contaminating their hands
- And then… check to see whether anyone has paint on their hands (teaching point: gloves can leak!)
With Glo Germ or similar UV product
Supplies:
• UV-visible powder
• UV light
• handwashing facilities
- Have everyone coat their hands in the UV powder
- Then, everyone washes their hands (and make sure each person has to turn on and off the taps, if the taps are not automatic!)
- (Also, put some UV product on the door handles if the hand washing facilities are in another room!)
- After people have washed and dried their hands, shine the UV light on their hands so they can see what areas they missed.
Infection Control Sherlock Holmes
Set up an infection crime scene and invite detectives to come solve the clues!
Download the Sherlock Holmes Game Plan.
Activities for Young Learners
- E-bug has some fun resources and games for young learners, if you have any kids you’d like to get interested in infection control.
- Kids Boost Immunity provides free science, social studies and health lessons developed by teachers to inspire digital-age students in support of UNICEF Canada. See their sister site for adults: I Boost Immunity
Games
Crosswords
- Level 1
- Level 2
- Answer Keys (both levels)
Word Searches
- Infection Control Word Search #1
- Infection Control Word Search #2
- Interior Health Hand Hygiene and Glove Use Word Search
Hand Hygiene Jeopardy Game
Infection Control Scrabble
Infection Control J-parody
The game is created in Powerpoint, so you will need a computer with a monitor that your contestants can all see.
- Infection Control Basics J-parody
- J-parody for labs
- J-parody for Public Health Nurses
- J-parody for Dental
Let’s Go Viral! Game Kit
PICNet has developed an educational game to help train your staff in infection control… and have some fun while doing it! Let’s Go Viral is a Family Feud-style game that can be played with 8-20 staff members, one game show host, and a show host assistant. The game is a series of questions about infection control, with the two teams competing for points by getting correct answers. Each question is built around a teachable moment; the instruction book and demo video include the educational information for question. The game takes about 45-60 minutes to play (depending on the amount of teaching your staff requires); the game can be shortened by omitting questions.
The questions are based around the topics of:
- How infections are transmitted
- Staff hand hygiene
- Patient/resident hand hygiene
- Personal protective equipment (PPE)
- Risk assessment
- Flu/norovirus season
- …and more.
The feedback we have received from users has been extremely positive:
“I just wanted to let you know that we finished doing the LGV program about 30 minutes ago and it was WONDERFUL! I’ve started to use it in my bi-monthly orientation classes for new hires and anniversary staff. Both teams had such a good time and I truly feel the lessons they learned are going to be remembered. Some of it was a review of existing knowledge and for some, it was totally new. They actually got quite competitive and I loved the energy going on in the room! Thank you so much for developing a fun way for folks to learn. Yay!”
Download the kit
You can download the kit to run this educational workshop yourself, and you can re-use the kit as many times as you like.
The educational game was developed for our visits to residential care facilities, but it is equally applicable to acute care settings. The game is suitable for all staff, including housekeeping and auxiliary.
The game cards and instructions are freely downloadable from this website to print them yourself. You’ll also have to cut and laminate them.
Download the game parts (to print yourself)
Watch a clip of the demo video
Watch the full demonstration videos
Promote your Let’s Go Viral! workshop
All the above resources are freely available for use under a Creative Commons license. See license details.