Decennial Conference: Great Minds Gather

Update from Saturday, 3/20: I have learned that it is nearly impossible to be in more than one place at one time, although I desperately want to be! I am like a kid going wild in a candy store -- there are just too many wonderful goodies at once! Sessions, posters, the exhibit hall -- makes you wish you could clonbe yourself to take full advantage of the immense offerings at the Decennial. On the exhibit hall floor it was amazing to see Bill Rutala cross paths with Elaine Larson -- this place is packed with superstars and for this journalist, it's an amazing opportunity to learn from these wise individuals. I am gratified to see so many infection preventionists here -- so many familiar faces -- because this meeting is enhanced by the presence of nurses who are on the front line in the fight against HAIs. Besides, IPs bring awelcomed perspective to the proceedings, and I hope that meaningful dialogue between IPs and scientists ensues. I wish I could capture the excitement and the enthusiasm of this meeting in this blog, but unless you are here in person, it pales in comparison. I hope to capture the essence of this meeting in a forthcoming issue of ICT. In the meantime, if you are the Decennial and read this, please feel free to post an online comment with your thoughts about the meeting!

Original post from Thursday:

Greetings from Atlanta, where the Fifth Decennial Conference on HAIs is underway. It is a privilege to be in the midst of some of the most brilliant minds in infection prevention and public health. Truly the superstars in our profession, the list of attendees and speakers reads like a veritable who's who! It's one thing to read their research but it's quite another to shake the hands of people who have led the charge against HAIs and are the preemminent thinkers of our generation in relation to the fight against infections and adverse events. Last night, CDC director Thomas Frieden delivered an inspired presentation on "Maximizing Infection Prevention in the Next Decade" with an emphasis on "defining the unacceptable." What this entails, according to Frieden, is the number of people who are sickened or die from hospital-acquired infections, how little we know about the burden of infections, how rare the implementation of prevention measures is, and the fact that we don't know how many infections are preventable. Stay tuned for more updates from the conference as the day progresses.

Update at 3:45 p.m.: Just attended a very lively session that debated the use of contact precautions for all patients colonized with MDROs. The audience was polled as to whether they agreed on this policy; 49 percent absolutely agreed with the practice, while 22 percent were in favor of it, 6 percent were neutral, and 14 percent disagreed with the practice. Following the presentations by David Pegues for the practice and Kathy Kirkland against, the audience was polled again and those for contact precautions decreased from 49 percent to 31 percent, and those against it increased from 14 percent to 18 percent.The consensus? More dialogue on theissue is absolutely warranted. For more detail on this session, "Controversies in Contact Precautions," watch for the May issue of ICT.