Background The prevention of healthcare-associated infection (HAI) is of particular importance in the provision of quality safe healthcare. It is estimated that there is an annual occurrence of approximately 175,000 HAIs in Australia. However, in the absence of a national HAI surveillance program, this is unable to be substantiated (Russo et al., 2015). By the most recent estimation, HAI has a financial impact of approximately AUD$1 billion per annum on the Australian healthcare system (Graves et al., 2009). Prevalence rates of HAI