The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ambitious plan to survey the nation’s hospital infection programs is drawing fire for both going beyond its regulatory authority in some areas and not requiring more infection prevention staff and support employees in others….
Long-term settings have limited options for isolation measures, as residents need to remain active and interact as a matter of health. Similarly, theoretical decolonization protocols raise a host of other issues, for example, possible mupirocin resistance in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus…
San Antonio: Improper disinfection of reusable “O-ring” devices used in dialysis equipment led to bacterial infections in three patients, two of which required hospitalization, a public health investigator reports at the annual conference of the Association for Professionals in Infection…
San Antonio, TX: Given current population demographics, infection prevention following joint replacement surgery is emerging as a new priority to reduce health care costs and patient suffering. In particular, preventing infectious complications following increasingly common knee and hip replacements could…
The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology is seeking feedback on its new “competency model” for the profession, which has gone from relative obscurity to increasing national attention as health care associated infections (HAIs) have become a much-discussed…
If you can’t make it to the upcoming APIC conference — or even if you can — Hospital Infection Control & Prevention will be providing breaking coverage and live reports from San Antonio via this blog, our exclusive newswire reports…
As a veteran of the ever-changing infection prevention beat, I usually call Ruth Carrico when some complicated multi-faceted issue could stand a dose of uncommon sense. Years ago, I was trying to reach her for a story and she came…
Infection control nurses, practitioners, professionals, preventionists – the name has changed over the years but never the core mission: patient safety. Today’s infection preventionists may be making darn sure a urinary catheter is promptly taken out one day and testifying…
With the misuse and overuse of antibiotics driving drug resistance in general and emerging Clostridium difficile in particular, infection preventionists and health care epidemiologists want to have a greater role in antimicrobial stewardship programs. It may seem surprising that this…
”A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself.” Joseph Campbell How many lives saved, families unshattered, tears that never fell? Preventing something by definition means it never occurs, but we know infection…