Advanced Technology

Maine health officials relied on an automated system to provide contact tracing for COVID-19 to a relatively sparse and spread out population. It worked.

Jody Feigel, RN, MSN: “You find when you’re at home, you roll out of bed, you get your coffee, you immediately get on your computer, and you just work. When we’re at the hospital, we have a lot of interruptions and a lot of times they’re good interruptions, sometimes not so much. And we head out to see whatever fires need to be put out.”

A telework-ready infection preventionist is an IP who continues to support their facility if they also end up in quarantine. Teleworking like so many other aspects of nursing is something we just needed to jump into. No training, no guidebook, no manual.

For ABC, the bacterial counts were 56% lower for post-manual cleaning plus UV, compared with manual cleaning alone. For MRSA, they were 93% lower.

There’s not much profit to be had in manufacturing drugs for rare infections, and governments want to change that.