APIC 2019 Film Festival winner demonstrates proper hand hygiene protocol

June 14, 2019

 The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) announced Gundersen Health System in La Crosse, Wisconsin as the winner of its ninth annual Film Festival competition, to be awarded during APIC’s 46th Annual Conference. The video entitled “Gundersen Petri Bowl” demonstrates the importance of hand hygiene through a variety of scenarios.

Gundersen’s film is styled after a sportscast and follows an epic battle between the Infectors and the Preventers in a number of patient care scenarios. Leveraging humorous critique, Suds Stockton and Bubbles McGee break down three separate scenes in which the Infectors fail to carry out proper hand hygiene while the Preventers enhance patient safety by using the correct techniques.

“The annual Film Festival creates an opportunity to use humor to drive home the key points of infection prevention,” said 2019 APIC Annual Conference Chair Karoline Sperling, MPH, MLS (ASCP)CM, CIC, in the statement. “The creativity we see in these films speaks to the broader need to be more creative in our day-to-day implementation of infection prevention practices.”

An expert panel of judges selected the winning video for its creativity, originality, general appeal, significance to the infection prevention community, and entertaining and educational message.

Other film submissions explored a range of timely infection prevention topics, ranging from a musical take on vaccinations from Update Medical University to MedStar National Rehabilitation Hospital’s animated guide to sepsis. Erlanger Health Systems created a life-sized germ in a music video that showed the number of ways in which germs can spread throughout a hospital failing effective infection prevention practices.

View all the video submissions on the APIC website. APIC conference attendees can vote for the APIC 2019 Film Festival People’s Choice Award winner, which will be announced at the closing plenary session on Friday, June 14.