HAIs

January 07, 2021

Linda Spaulding RN, BC, CIC, CHEC, CHOP: “Infection preventionists need to learn how to clean an endoscope, or at least observe the cleaning…. Infection preventionists need to make rounds, they need to talk to the person processing.”

December 31, 2020

Maureen Vowles: “I think that the relationship between infection preventionists and public health is key to the success of preventing CRAB and other multi-drug resistant organisms.”

December 23, 2020

Though tough months lie ahead for infection preventionists and other healthcare professionals, hope remains that at some point in 2021 things will begin to settle down. In the end, it comes down to a simple formula: We win, COVID-19 loses.

December 11, 2020

Infection preventionists can work with environmental services (EVS) leadership to implement a routine practice for quality assurance checks that EVS leadership can follow. These metrics can then be reviewed as an aggregate with the IP department to target whether further education may be beneficial.

December 09, 2020

At this point, since 2014, we all have improved our ability to respond to and prevent emerging infectious diseases, so why not make this practice a permanent part of infection control and not just one that comes up ad hoc?

December 02, 2020

When an 850-bed urban hospital fought off COVID-19 in part by having to relax infection prevention protocols, the opportunistic and deadly carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB) struck.

November 27, 2020

CRAB has chameleon-like tendencies that allow it to absorb material from other organisms, and that allows it to ward off most antibiotics. It’s a Superbug.

November 18, 2020

Study: “These results strongly recommend routine daily cleaning of mobile phones for effective reduction of device contamination; moreover, medical staff should perform hand hygiene before and after using mobile phones.”

November 17, 2020

During the period that employees wore a monitoring badge, compliance with hand hygiene protocols increased significantly.

November 12, 2020

Danish investigators wanted to see if a nudge provided by a green smiley face light on dispensers of alcohol-based disinfectant would improve hand hygiene compliance of nurses and doctors. It did. Greatly.