[The role of the "infection control nurse (ICN)" in an outbreak].

The nosocomial infection and its expansion is a big problem for both customers and healthcare organizations. It is one of the most important tasks for the infection control team to prevent spreadng the hospital infection and to minimize its damage for clients and healthcare organizations. Japanese nurse association (JNA) has established the system of the certified nurses who finished authorized certification program in 15 areas including infection control in 1999. They are called "Certified Expert nurse (CEN)" and the number of CEN concerning about infection control (ICN) has reached 146 nurses in Japan in 2004. ICNs should have an ability to predict the possibility of an outbreak and to take measures to meet the situation, practically direct intervention and research for the outbreak. In this literature I have summarized the roles of ICN, introducing our experience of the scabies outbreak in our affiliated intermediate care facility for the senior citizens. It is important for ICN to research and analyze the outbreak, at the same time we have to feedback effectively to the healthcare stuffs to change their attitude and develop the system to discover the outbreak earlier by educating them.