Infection Control Today, December 2021 (Vol. 25 No. 10)

No health care worker is immune from the dangers of handling sharps. Physicians hold a rate just under that of nurses, mostly related to use of scalpels, but are less likely to report these injuries.

Crystal Heishman, MBA, MSN, RN, ONC, CIC: “You don’t ever want to go into a sterilization department and say, ‘You’re doing this wrong’. Because they’re the subject matter experts. You want to learn. You want to learn the process. You want to work together because it makes a stronger partnership.”

Doe Kley, RN, CIC, MPH,T-CHEST: “We just can’t keep doing what we’ve been doing with our singular focus on one pathogen. We know that while we were doing that—while we were so busy with COVID-19—other really dangerous and emerging pathogens got a foothold. The one that scares me the most is Candida auris.”

The use of almost every antibiotic increases the chances of Clostridioides difficile infection, and that includes the drugs that are used to treat C diff, a study states.

In order of occurrence, the most common types of HAIs are catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) at 32%; surgical site infection (SSI) at 22%; pneumonia (ventilator-associated pneumonia) at 15%; and central-line associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) at 14%.

Vetting new technology and products is a complicated endeavor that takes hours if not weeks before a decision can be made as to whether to bring products into a health care facility. The COVID-19 pandemic did not give health care the luxury of time.

One of the most disturbing features of C auris is that, in its relatively short life, it has rapidly developed resistance to the few available treatment options.

Infection preventionists have been measuring hand hygiene with very little change in practice or retention of proper practice. Now is the time to think of new ways to improve hand hygiene and patient outcomes.

Compared to cases confirmed by human clinical testing, the air sampling used in the college dorms in the study had a success rate of 75%–100% in detecting infection by SARS-CoV-2.

The term “mild COVID-19” is an oxymoron. The devastating long-term effects of long COVID, along with future emergence of cardiovascular disease in those with minimal initial symptoms, reminds us that all SARS-CoV-2 infections may pose grave dangers to those who contract the virus.

Not only can pediatric patients of all ages carry high viral loads of SARS-CoV-2, but they can also serve as a means for the virus to mutate, according to a new study.

IPs know the reliable sources and are familiar with reading scientific studies and being able to translate those findings to staff in an understandable way.