Background: During pandemics, continuous and innovative responses are urgently needed in hospital settings by Infection Preventionists (IPs). While research has uncovered many attributes and roles of such professionals, the micro-level, including the practices to streamline the relationship between preventionists and frontline workers is only partly understood.

Purpose: This study aims to understand how IPs continuously implement changes in IPC practices during a pandemic.

Method: This study comprises a qualitative descriptive study design. Data collection took place from March to June 2020, and it was based on primary and secondary data. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 health care professionals enrolled as IPs in Brazilian hospitals. Supplemented documents were used for data triangulation. The data were analyzed through a thematic analysis technique.

Findings: The findings suggest that the continuous implementation of changes can be interpreted from a socio-cognitive-emotional and a socio-structural orientation. The socio-cognitive-emotional orientation aggregates dimensions of building internal legitimacy, information and knowledge exchange and creating a psychologically safe climate. The socio-structural orientation aggregates dimensions of governance structure alignment, mobilization of resources and refining the implementation blueprint.

Conclusion: The findings emphasize three domains for continuous implementation of changes: a) gaining credibility, b) creating a psychologically safe climate and c) reorganizing internal structure. The study provides a holistic view of how IPs, as implementers, feel about the content, the frequency and urgency of changes, and how they interact with individuals at different hierarchical levels and with different backgrounds in order to improve the acceptance of one-off and sequences of changes.

Practical Implications: This study presents a compilation of activities that, from the perspective of IPs, are the baseline for the continuous implementation of changes in IPC practices during the pandemic. The study categorizes sets of implementation activities and provide details on how they can be conceived and organized in hospitals. The findings can guide the work of other IPs on how to mobilize hospital professionals, structures and resources to facilitate the implementation tasks and performance.