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Infection prevention and control in vet clinics rests on a handful of core practices: a written program with one named person in charge, hand hygiene before and after every patient, outerwear that stays in the clinic, cleaning before disinfecting, careful laundry and waste handling, and a real isolation area. Those are the key messages of the Canadian best practice guide for small animal clinics, first sponsored by the Canadian Committee on Antibiotic Resistance and now updated in a 2020 edition hosted by the Ontario Animal Health Network.
None of it is exotic. The hard part is doing it on a busy Tuesday, with a parvo suspect in room two and three walk-ins at the desk.
This post pulls out the practical core so your team can hold it up against what really happens day to day. It's a summary, not a replacement; the full guide and its audit checklist are what you should work from.
Why does infection control matter in a small animal clinic?
It matters because a clinic puts sick animals, healthy animals, staff and owners under one roof. The Canadian guide says infection prevention protects patients, owners, veterinary personnel and the wider community, and that everyone on the team should play an active part.
It also makes one plain point that shapes the rest: in most situations, cutting exposure to microorganisms is the most important part of disease control. Almost every rule below is a version of that idea.
Every clinic, whatever its size, should have a formal infection control program, a written manual and a named infection control practitioner.
Start with a program, a manual and one person in charge
The guide's first structural recommendation is that every veterinary clinic, whatever its type or size, has a formal infection control program, a written manual describing it, and an infection control practitioner (ICP) to coordinate it. The ICP doesn't have to be a vet. What matters is that somebody owns the job, because a task that belongs to everyone tends to belong to no one.
It also asks every facility to do some kind of surveillance. For passive surveillance, that means gathering the data you already have in one place and having the ICP look at it regularly: surgical site infections, a cluster of diarrhoea in the ward, a resistant infection that keeps coming back.
Practically, write the ICP's name and a backup into the manual. Keep the manual short enough that new staff will actually read it. Put infection cases on the agenda of a regular team meeting, and run the clinic IPC audit checklist from the 2020 guide's appendices once or twice a year.
Infection prevention and control in vet clinics: the routine practices
Routine practices are what everyone does with every patient, sick or not. The guide groups them into hand hygiene, risk reduction (PPE, cleaning and disinfection, laundry, waste), risk assessment of animals and people, and education for staff, owners and the public.
Hand hygiene
The guide calls hand hygiene the single most important way to prevent infections in a healthcare setting. Hands get cleaned, by washing or with an alcohol-based sanitizer:
- Before and after contact with a patient, especially before invasive procedures.
- Before and after touching items in the patient's environment.
- After any contact with a patient's body fluids.
- Before putting on gloves, and especially after taking them off.
Protective equipment
| Rule | In practice |
|---|---|
| Cover street clothes with outerwear | Lab coat or scrubs whenever working in the clinic |
| Outerwear stays at work | Scrubs and lab coats are not worn outside the clinic |
| Launder after infectious cases | Coats and gowns worn with a possibly infectious patient are washed after each use |
| Gloves when fluids are possible | Also for cleaning surfaces and handling grossly soiled laundry |
| Gloves are not hand hygiene | Remove promptly and clean hands right away |
| Face protection for splashes | Whenever splashes or sprays are likely |
That second row is the one that slips most. Grabbing a coffee down the street in scrubs feels harmless, and the guide says not to.
Clean first, then disinfect
Cleaning removes visible organic matter with soap or detergent, and disinfection kills what's left. The guide is firm that cleaning always comes before a disinfectant goes on, and that gloves are worn and hands washed after any cleaning task.
Choosing a disinfectant means weighing a long list: spectrum of activity, how easily organic matter inactivates it, the pathogens you're likely to meet, compatibility with your detergents, toxicity for people and animals, contact time, residual activity, corrosiveness, environmental effects and cost. Whatever you pick, multi-use equipment gets cleaned and disinfected between every patient.
A disinfectant sprayed on a dirty table and wiped straight off does very little. Clean, apply, then respect the contact time on the label.
What does the guidance say about laundry and waste?
The guidance says linens get washed with detergent and dried in a hot air dryer, and laundry isn't clean until it's dry. Wash laundry from possibly infectious cases separately, with bleach in the cycle, and pre-clean heavily soiled linens by hand before they go in the machine.
Scrubs and lab coats should be laundered on site or at a commercial laundry set up for medical or veterinary facilities, not in someone's machine at home. Soiled linens go straight into a designated hamper, and clean ones are stored where they'll stay clean.
For waste, everything goes in leak-proof bags or containers. Sharps, tissues, blood-soaked materials and dead animals are treated as biomedical waste.
How should an isolation area work?
An isolation area should keep a contagious patient, and everything that touches them, apart from the rest of the clinic. The guide says every clinic should have one for animals with potentially contagious diseases, and it's specific about the rules:
- Keep only the equipment that patient needs inside, and treat everything that went in as infectious.
- Let in the fewest essential staff, each wearing PPE that stays in the room.
- Treat all waste from the room as potentially infectious.
- Don't walk isolated dogs, or let them toilet, in public areas or anywhere other animals use.
- As a policy, don't let clients visit hospitalised animals with a suspected infectious disease.
Software can help the team see who's in isolation at a glance. In PetGrid, the hospital whiteboard shows every admitted pet, and each stay has a treatment sheet with orders and check-offs, so isolation care stays visible at shift change.
Make it stick with training and records
Training is what makes infection control stick, which is why education sits among the guide's routine practices. A protocol nobody remembers doesn't protect anyone. Train new hires in their first week, refresh the whole team once a year, and send owners home with simple instructions when their pet has an incision.
Clear roles help too. PetGrid's staff roles give each person the screens their job needs and keep the name of whoever changed a record, which supports the kind of follow-up our post on medical records inspection describes.
Questions fréquentes
What is the most important infection control practice in a vet clinic?
Hand hygiene. The Canadian small animal guide calls it the single most important way to prevent infections in a healthcare setting, before and after every patient and after taking off gloves.
Does a small clinic need an infection control practitioner?
Yes, according to the Canadian guide. Every clinic, whatever its type or size, should have a formal program, a written manual and an infection control practitioner to coordinate it.
Can staff wear scrubs outside the clinic?
No, the guidance says protective outerwear, scrubs included, shouldn't be worn outside the clinic. Scrubs and lab coats should be laundered on site or at a laundry equipped for medical or veterinary facilities.
Why do you clean before you disinfect?
Because organic matter stops many disinfectants from working. The guide says cleaning with soap or detergent always has to come before a disinfectant goes on.
Where can I find an IPC audit checklist for a vet clinic?
The 2020 Infection Prevention and Control Best Practices for Small Animal Veterinary Clinics, hosted by the Ontario Animal Health Network, includes a clinic IPC audit checklist in its appendices. The earlier CCAR summary works as a checklist too.
En bref
Infection control in a small animal clinic is mostly habits: one person who owns the program, clean hands around every patient, outerwear that stays at work, cleaning before disinfecting, careful laundry and an isolation routine people actually follow. The Canadian guide and its audit checklist have the full detail.
Curious how PetGrid's whiteboard, treatment sheets and staff roles would fit your clinic's day? Book a short demo with the PetGrid team.
Voyez PetGrid dans votre propre clinique : la console, les brouillons de l'IA et l'application que reçoivent vos clients, avec vos propres données.
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