The Certification Board of Infection Control and Epidemiology awards the credentials for infection prevention. All four are multidisciplinary — most holders are nurses, but the field also draws from medical technology, public health, and epidemiology.
The four credentials
CIC — certified in infection control, the field's principal certification, held by more than 12,000 people.
a-IPC — associate infection prevention and control, an entry-level credential for people new to the field. Around 800 hold it.
LTC-CIP — infection prevention in long-term care. Around 1,200 hold it.
AL-CIP — an advanced leadership credential for experienced practitioners.
Recertification for each runs either by proctored examination or by accruing infection prevention units.
The entry-level credential is the useful design
Most nursing certifications require substantial practice hours before a nurse can sit them, which creates the familiar problem of needing the job to get the credential and the credential to get the job.
The associate credential exists specifically to break that. It is designed to be taken before the experience required for full certification has accrued, which makes it a genuine route in for a bedside nurse moving into infection prevention rather than a consolation prize.
That matters because infection prevention has no training pipeline. Nearly everyone arrives from clinical practice. See infection prevention nursing.
Why the long-term care credential exists
Nursing homes were required to designate an infection preventionist, and the setting's problems are not the hospital's: respiratory outbreaks, resistant organisms, communal living, high staff turnover, and thin licensed staffing.
A credential built for that setting is a recognition that a hospital-trained preventionist walking into a nursing home is not immediately competent in it. See long-term and post-acute care nursing and nursing home staffing requirements.
What it is worth
It is close to a requirement. Infection preventionist job postings routinely list the principal credential as required or required within a set period after hire, more often than in most specialties.
It attests to the part of the job that is hardest to fake. Applying standardized surveillance definitions correctly is the difference between a defensible infection rate and a meaningless one, and those definitions are a large part of what the examination covers.
Reportable measures. Infections are reported to a national surveillance system, feed public hospital comparisons, and carry payment penalties, which is why organizations fund this credential readily. See quality nursing.
Who should take it
Nurses moving into infection prevention should sit the entry-level credential early and the full certification once the experience is there. Nurses in long-term care leadership who have absorbed the infection preventionist role, whether or not it was in the job description, are the group for whom the setting-specific credential is most obviously worth having.
Related
Sources
- Certification Board of Infection Control and Epidemiology — on the CIC, a-IPC, LTC-CIP, and AL-CIP credentials, holder counts, and recertification routes. Accessed September 9, 2026.
- National Healthcare Safety Network — Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on standardized surveillance definitions and reporting. Accessed September 9, 2026.