Research Ethics and Infection Control

The Keystone study of prevention of catheter-related infections in intensive care units raised important issues regarding infection control and research ethics. Infection control is an area common to public health and quality improvement. The performance of surveillance, the reporting of infection control data, and the response to complaints are all obligations raised by the international health regulations. The regulatory system around research ethics focuses on the individual subject in research and is not designed around areas such as infection control. Scientific methods are common to both infection control and research; both may result in "generalizable knowledge." Infection control physicians should work with their institutional review boards to try to streamline the process of ethics review. Regulatory change may be desirable to define and limit what infection control activities are construed as research.