As originally described in the November 2012 issue of Hospital Infection Control & and Prevention, researchers have demonstrated in a large-scale trial that a combination of daily chlorhexidine baths and a five-day regimen of nasal mupirocin reduced bloodstream infections (BSIs)…
A few months back in this space we reported an unusually frank assessment from a CDC epidemiologist, who warned that due to “perverse incentives” in the U.S. health care system hospitals do not always lose money on nosocomial infections. Forget breaking…
Relatively uncommon in the United States before 2000, carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) continue a dramatic increase in health care settings, moving across the health care continuum and causing infections that are difficult to treat and have high mortality, the Centers for…
In light of recent media reports of more workers being fired for refusing to be vaccinated against influenza, I recalled the rather no-nonsense view of veteran vaccine science advocate Paul Offit, MD, chief of infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital…
Norovirus has become a common scourge, generally perceived as an extremely disruptive but self-limiting nuisance. There is another aspect of this emerging virus that has been somewhat overshadowed: It is a “debilitating and life-threatening infection in immunosuppressed patients,” researchers report.1…
The silos that separate patient safety and worker safety are coming down. Preventing medical errors and protecting health care workers are part of the same continuum, The Joint Commission accrediting body asserts in a new monograph. For employee health professionals,…
Bring science back into the discussion of influenza vaccination. That is the essential message of a controversial report on flu vaccination by the Center for Infectious Disease Research & Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. While…
Marty Makary, MD, MPH, an associate professor of surgery and health policy at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, is the author of the recently published book “Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won’t Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care.” We…
In findings that are expected to set a new standard of care in intensive care units, researchers demonstrated in a large-scale trial that a combination of chlorhexidine baths and nasal mupirocin slashed bloodstream infections (BSIs) for all pathogens by a staggering 44%….
Infection preventionists are all too familiar with the wildly successful program that inevitably loses energy and fades back to baseline levels. That is not the case with the Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP), say clinicians who have adopted the approach…