Meet Infection Control Today's Editorial Advisory Board Member: Priya Pandya-Orozco, DNP, MSN, RN, PHN, CIC

Introducing the Infection Control Today's (ICT's) Editorial Board members—a diverse group of professionals dedicated to advancing infection prevention and control practices. This series highlights each member's unique expertise and contributions to the field.

From groundbreaking research to innovative strategies, these experts are at the forefront of enhancing health care safety. Join us as we learn their insights, experiences, and visions for the future, providing valuable knowledge and inspiration to elevate infection control protocols.

In this installment, we hear from Bernadette “Priya” Pandya-Orozco, DNP, MSN, RN, PHN, CIC, is the manager for infection prevention at O'Connor Hospital, which is part of the County of Santa Clara Hospital and Health System.

My name is Priya Pandya-Orozco, and I am an infection prevention and control manager. My journey started in infection control quite a long time ago. I would say it was about 26-27 years ago, [and] I was in labor and delivery and doing my care as a bedside nurse. I started thinking about how infection can spread from just not wearing appropriate PPE [personal protective equipment], maybe at the birthing when a patient is about to eminently give birth.

I thought about ideas for how I could wear PPE. I remember thinking there was some talk about how sometimes putting PPE on can remove the connection with your patient. And I thought, but we need to protect ourselves. And how do you do that? And how can you explain it?

So, it was my first thought as a new nurse—thinking about what and how I protect myself from infections. How do I ensure that I'm also protecting my patient? And that's where my brain started, like morphing into, what was it? I didn't even know at the time, honestly, that there was this whole infection prevention department, and that feels like a complete blackout in my mind, like I should have known that I was going to be my passion, my love, for the rest of my life.

That was quite a long time ago. Then, I went into public health and worked there for about 7 years. I worked on communicable disease and immunization services, seeing prevention at the front line and looking at how we reach communities that are at risk. And that was another love of mine.

Then, in 2009, H1N1 hit, and we also had some pertussis outbreaks. Infection prevention in the acute care hospital was such a solid partner with public health. I thought, “Oh, wow. Wouldn't it be great if I could join that force there in the acute care setting?”

So, I did, and I joined and followed them. This is where I ended up. I ended up as a manager later on, and I started as a baby infection preventionist. I was trained and mentored by some amazing bosses who helped guide and steer me in the right direction, and I've ended up here and am very happy.

Trending Topics

So, trending topics right now for me are focused on environmental cleaning and disinfection, as I'm sure everybody else is. Still, I'm looking—and I have been for a very long time—with the instructions for use [IFU] by the manufacturers, and they're very difficult to comprehend. I've found some that have been so difficult to understand. The grammar is incorrect. It doesn't fit a hospital. They are marketing to a hospital but provide information or instructions only done in a home; they don't get clear guidelines.

So those things concern me because I am thinking about newer IPs. How do you navigate that? How do you figure out how to get the manufacturer to give you something doable for the frontline, and then with the focus of reducing the number of disinfectants in a hospital, to 3 or 4 and one being sporicidal you want to reach out and just say, “Can we have one that does it all?” Because it's just so hard, and you want to make the frontline have an easier process.

The whole point of cleaning and disinfection is that we shouldn't make it more complicated with 19 different products that have to be utilized when they don't all kill the same pathogen. You can't say that you have a clean environment if you find out later [that] you have a high-level or high-priority pathogen, like Candida auris, or if you have C difficile. and you’re not utilizing a disinfectant that would kill [those pathogens].

Everybody knows you come to the hospital, and maybe, on day 1 or day 2 of your admission, we start to see you have symptoms of a certain pathogen. How, then, are we supposed to go back and look at what has come in and out of the room and is not properly disinfected?

So, those are the things that are difficult. We're trying to make a focused effort to educate our frontline, [and] everybody, even all our hospital staff and providers, about what cleaning and disinfection are, how to use the products effectively, and give visual aids to everyone so that they have it at their fingertips.

Some of the hot topics coming out again are similar to the manufacturers IFUs, looking and going, and I know there's a lot of work at APIC [Association for Professionals in Infection Prevention and Epidemiology] to lean in and say, “This is what we need to do.”

What Should ICT Cover in the Next 18 Months?

There was a recent paper on the IFU, and that was helpful. We educated our leadership on that, and that helped tremendously. But sometimes you're underwater with anything happening, and you don't know that these things are above your head and circling, and you need to be looking at those pieces.

Meet the Infection Control Today Editorial Advisory Board Members: Priya Pandya-Orozco, DNP, MSN, RN, PHN, CIC.

But how do you give people even more education to like newer IPs, or even seasoned IPs, and say, here's a repository that needs to go out? I want to say, it's a memo. I think it'd be nice to have things [like the] health alert networks in different states. So, we have CAHAN here in California, so it'd be interesting if we had something like a CAHAN message that came out through ICT and said, “This is something that you could send out.” And it would be like an SBAR [Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation] to share with everyone, taking this as what it is. Instead of the IP having to make the message when it's the same message, we're saying there's a way to summarize it generally. I think about those things because I try to make them general.

After all, we serve many different areas, including subacute, SNFs [skilled nursing facilities], hospitals, and clinics, and we want to make sure that it meets their needs and what they can utilize. When we give instructions on…how we want them to take this information and share it with the frontline, I think that might be extremely helpful.

I think I should also focus on what cleaning and disinfection are. We are partners with—and I have always said this--I'm partners with SPD [sterile processing department] and EVS [environmental services], walking in. Because you need to know how everyone who's cleaning instrumentation and who's cleaning our environment. You need to understand what their hardships are. What training are they receiving? You need to be a part of those trainings. Those are difficult to be a part of when you're trying to do surveillance and keep up with everything; it will help you in the long run if you partner with those wonderful teammates in EVS and SPD.