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Environmental hygiene, at its best, follows a prescribed set of steps in an evidence-based protocol, and guided by best-practice recommendations. Deviate from this protocol, or worse yet, cut corners, and patient outcomes can be jeopardized. As hospitals respond to the call to do more with less, the expediency with which patient rooms are turned over is increasing, leading some experts to sound the alarm about compromising patient safety.

Environmental services professionals play a crucial role in helping to prevent the spread of infections in patients, and to boost their ongoing education and training, the Association for the Healthcare Environment (AHE) of the American Hospital Association (AHA) is introducing a new certification program for these frontline technicians that will enhance their competencies. The Certified Healthcare Environmental Services Technician (CHEST) credential ensures that the cleaning practices in hospitals and other healthcare environments are superior and directly corre-late to help make a positive impact on infection rates, costs, quality of care, patient experience and outcomes. 

Researchers from the University of Southampton have demonstrated how a pioneering ultrasonic device can significantly improve the cleaning of medical instruments and reduce contamination and risk of infection.

Senior molecular biology major Jacob Hatch knows MRSA as the infection that took his dad's leg. Hatch was thousands of miles away on an LDS (Mormon) mission when methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus decalcified the bones in his dad's foot and lower leg, leading to an emergency amputation just below the knee.

Bacteria aren't the only nonhuman invaders to colonize the gut shortly after a baby's birth. Viruses also set up house there, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. All together, these invisible residents are thought to play important roles in human health. The study, published online Sept. 14 in Nature Medicine, reports data from eight healthy infants and is one of the first surveys of viruses that reside in the intestine. The investigators analyzed stool samples to track how the babies' bacterial gut microbiomes and viromes changed over the first two years of life.

Three antibiotics that, individually, are not effective against a drug-resistant staph infection can kill the deadly pathogen when combined as a trio, according to new research. The researchers, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, have killed the bug - methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) - in test tubes and laboratory mice, and believe the same three-drug strategy may work in people.

Virginia Tech researchers have discovered a new group of antibiotics that may provide relief to some of the more than 2 million people in the United States affected by antibiotic resistance.The new antibiotics target the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and the antibiotic resistant strains commonly known as MRSA, short for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.

Q: Our facility has been using rigid sterilization containers for some time. We do not have a cart washer or mechanical washer so we wipe them out with a disinfectant wipe. I attended a webinar and was told this is not accepted practice. We have been cleaning the containers this way for years. What is the correct practice?