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Healthcare professionals and patients all agree that wrong-site surgery is a serious and preventable adverse event that should never happen. Although reporting is not mandatory in most states, some estimates put the national incidence rate, which includes wrong patient, wrong procedure, wrong site, and wrong side surgeries, as high as 40 per week. Recognizing this as a critical patient safety issue, eight U.S. hospitals and ambulatory surgical centers teamed up with the Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare to address the problem. The Center and the participating organizations used methods such as Lean Six Sigma and change management to discover the causes of and put a stop to these preventable breakdowns in patient care.

Scientists have tested a predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio against Salmonella in the guts of live chickens. They found that it significantly reduced the numbers of Salmonella bacteria and, importantly, showed that Bdellovibrio are safe when ingested. The research was funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council, carried out by professor Liz Sockett's team at the University of Nottingham, with Dr Robert Atterbury and professor Paul Barrow at the University of Nottingham Vet School; and published in the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology. Researcher Dr. Laura Hobley notes, "Bdellovibrio has the potential to be used as a living antibiotic against some major human and animal pathogens, such as E. coli and other Gram-negative bacteria." Previous studies have shown that Bdellovibrio is very effective at invading and killing other bacterial cells in a test tube. It looks likely to provide an alternative to antibiotic medicines at a time when bacterial resistance is a significant problem to human and animal health. Hobley adds, "We think that Bdellovibrio could be particularly useful as a topical treatment for wounds or foot rots but we wanted to know what might happen if it is ingested either deliberately as a treatment, or by accident." Salmonella likes to grow in the guts of poultry and other animals and can cause food poisoning in humans. In lab experiments Bdellovibrio can kill Salmonella by breaking into the cells and destroying them from the inside. This research shows that it also works inside the gut of a bird and is safe, not harming them or changing their behaviour. Bdellovibrio reduced the numbers of Salmonella by 90 percent and the birds remained healthy, grew well, and were generally in good condition. "We concluded that Bdellovibrio aren't long lived in the bird guts they had a strong effect for about 48 hours, which dropped off after this time. If we were to use this method to completely rid the birds of Salmonella, we might have to test a program of multiple dosing. But the point of this study was really to ensure that Bdellovibrio is safe and effective when ingested," says Hobley. Professor Douglas Kell, chief executive, BBSRC, says,  "Once we have understood the fundamental nature of an extraordinary organism such as Bdellovibrio, it makes sense that we should look at potential uses for it. The impact of bacterial infections on human and animal health is significant and since antibiotic resistance is a major issue, alternatives from nature may become increasingly important."  

Johns Hopkins University graduate students have invented a device to reduce the risk of infection, clotting and narrowing of the blood vessels in patients who need blood-cleansing dialysis because of kidney failure.

If you are reading this, you value infection prevention and control. This article fits into that passion for one simple reason: sterile processing departments (SPDs) are pivotal to this value. The SPD critically serves surgical patients with instrument and other durable equipment for patients throughout the hospital.

Persistence is the cornerstone of the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) prevention program at Nash Health Care. Through our multidisciplinary approach, we focused intensely on hand hygiene, contact precautions and environmental cleaning. We also felt that if we focused on MRSA, which causes high-profile healthcare-associated infections (HAIs), these control measures would also have an impact on other multi-drug resistant organisms as well. Mirror clings, signs and screen savers highlighting hand hygiene were used as reminders to staff and physicians. As a result of our efforts, Nash Health Care has been recognized for an Excellence in MRSA Reduction Award by VHA Inc., the national healthcare network, for progress in addressing this serious patient safety issue and in recognition of an 84 percent reduction in MRSA infections. In fact, Nash Health Care achieved nine consecutive months without a nosocomial MRSA infection.

Infection preventionists face a challenging and often times daunting task meeting the day-to-day regulatory requirements for public reporting of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have identified hand hygiene as the single most important intervention to reduce the transmission of infection.