Our study is the first to examine how diarrhoea is managed
in care homes in England, based on the latest guidance for
controlling C. difficile infection.Our findings demonstrate
widespread delays in infection control actions, along with some poor implementation of barrier nursing, for potentially
infectious diarrhoea. This has important implications for
transmission of C. difficile in this setting, where residents are
particularly vulnerable to infection and adverse outcomes.
Current infection prevention and control guidelines for
management of diarrhoea are not being implemented consistently,
sometimes to an extreme extent.Although our
study was not powered to look at differences between types
of home, our findings showed that residential and care
homes differed on reported infection control practices. We
would expect this to be the case, particularly in areas such
as management of human waste.