Infection Control Today, July/August 2021 (Vol. 25 No. 6)

Infection preventionists are integral members of the extended sterile processing department team and can be among the department’s biggest supporters.

In the new normal after COVID-19, infection preventionists will need to become more knowledgeable about and involved in the functionality of air ventilation in health care settings.

A five-year survey in Michigan seeks to determine if enhanced relationships between nursing homes and hospitals might facilitate better infection prevention in nursing homes.

The infection prevention department at Ascension Texas managed to shore up IP ranks by calling a couple of IPs out of retirement and asking another if she would postpone her retirement during a COVID-19 surge.

The rates of Clostridioides difficile remained about the same in March, April, May of 2020 as they were during the same 3 months in 2019, according to the study.

An integrated air management system requires proper engineering and not a pile-up approach of unproven products. One concern is that decision makers will fall into the nearsighted trap of selecting piecemeal products that require frequent maintenance.

One junior at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, the first to mandate COVID-19 vaccination, said, “I’m not antivax, I’m anti-mandate. My education should not be restricted based on my personal decision to receive the COVID-19 vaccination.”

The CDC’s Lynnette Brammer: “We always had talked about being prepared for an influenza pandemic. And being able to scale up our systems. Well, COVID scaled up our systems way more than we ever dreamed about scaling up for.”

Sara M. Reese, PhD, MPH, CIC, and Sarah Smathers, MPH, CIC, were 2 of the coauthors of a recent study that talks about how hospitals and other health care systems can bolster IP ranks.

There are not enough infection preventionists to go around now, and trends suggest that there may even be fewer in the future. But there are ways to shore up the ranks, a study says.