After the winter season has ended it is important for health and care organisations to review how well the season went and include aspects of preparation, communications, outbreak and incident management. This can include measuring against:

• local and national audits
• local and national targets 
• local and national policies
• feedback from staff, service users and visitors

It is important for organisations to celebrate successes and share achievements both locally and nationally.

Areas that can be considered for improvement include:

• staff education and training
• interpretation and application of necessary risk assessments
• control measures 
• application of guidance documents
• application of NIPCM, CHIPCM and appendices
• interdependencies with other departments or organisations
• communications with staff, visitors and service users

The organisations multi-disciplinary team should actively consider learning opportunities presented by HAI data exceedance, incidents and outbreaks and disseminate, escalate, and share all relevant lessons learned via established local and national governance and reporting routes.

The Hot Debrief Tool can assist in sharing of lessons learned.

The results of these lessons learned should be used as recommendations for next years winter season and used as an improvement measure.