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Building on its major educational campaign Infection Prevention and You focusing on hospital infection prevention, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) introduced educational materials for long-term care, home care, and ambulatory care to help patients stay safe from infections. Introduced in concert with International Infection Prevention Week (IIPW), Oct. 14-20, 2012, the new Infection Prevention and You campaign materials help guide important conversations patients should hold with their healthcare team to prevent infection. IIPW provides a focal point to empower stakeholders, including patients and their families, in taking an active role to prevent infection. In addition to empowering patients and their families to speak up to prevent infection, it is the first consumer campaign of its kind designed to educate consumers about infection preventionistsdedicated experts who partner with the broader healthcare team and implement evidence-based methods to prevent healthcare-associated infections. Patients often feel intimidated in the healthcare setting and may not know what to say or what do to stay safe, says APIC Communications Committee chair Ann Marie Pettis, RN, BSN, CIC, who assisted in developing the campaign content. Due to the growing need to help patients in non-acute care settings understand the active role they can play to prevent infections, we customized the campaign material for long-term, home, and ambulatory care. We hope that these materials will be used to promote quality and patient safety initiatives. APICs Infection Prevention and You campaign material is available in a variety of formats, including posters, brochures, and fliers. Individual healthcare organizations can also customize the material by adding their logos and the contact information for their infection prevention department. Campaign material is available for free download at: www.apic.org/patientsafety      

Timely screening and diagnosis is critical to the success of new treatments and ultimately to the survival of hepatitis C patients. A new study led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI MUHC) is the first to show that hepatitis C rapid and point of care tests with a quick turnaround time are highly accurate and reliable as conventional first-line laboratory tests. This head-to-head analysis, published in the current issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine, will lead to changes in screening practices and ultimately impact the control of hepatitis C infection worldwide.

Four experts in anesthesiology, infectious disease and pain medicine discussed the recent U.S. meningitis outbreak in the late-breaking education panel, The Fungal Meningitis Crisis, on Oct. 14. The panel attracted more than 500 attendees as part of the ANESTHESIOLOGY 2012 annual meeting.

A startling number of Americans may be putting their health at risk by not practicing good hand hygiene. When asked about their specific handwashing habits, a vast majority of adults (71 percent) say they regularly wash their hands, but that number may be grossly exaggerated. Nearly 6 in 10 (58 percent) admit that they have witnessed others leaving a public restroom without washing their hands. More than one-third of Americans (35 percent) have witnessed co-workers leaving facilities without washing, and 1 in 5 consumers surveyed (20 percent) have witnessed restaurant employees not washing their hands at all. The worst offenders seem to be men by a significant margin.

Infection Control Today spoke with Mary J. Ogg, MSN, RN, CNOR, a perioperative nursing specialist with the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN), regarding sharps safety-related issues in the operating room.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) says that more U.S. workers are injured in the healthcare industry than any other. This sector has one of the highest rates of work-related injuries and illnesses, and in 2010, it reported 653,900 injury and illness cases. Also for that year, the latest year for which data are available, OSHA says the incidence rate for work-related nonfatal injuries and illnesses in healthcare was 139.9; by comparison, the incidence rate for nonfatal injury and illnesses in all private industry was 107.7. That's a lot of injuries and illness despite the fact that the General Duty Clause of the legislation that created OSHA requires employers to provide workers with a safe workplace that does not have any known hazards that cause or are likely to cause death or serious injury.