HAIs

Sharon Ward-Fore: "Rather than reusing gowns, consider bundling patient care activities to conserve gowns. Donning a gown that has already been used can be tricky, and a source of contamination to the user."

Small clusters of environmental transmission in gyms and other workout settings can tell us about potential risky environments in healthcare. Outpatient physical therapy for one.

Ideally, link nurses increase awareness of infection control issues and motivate colleagues to improve in that regard, keeping patients and themselves safer by limiting the spread of HAIs.  

Infectoin preventionists's can bring their perspective and strengths to the antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) program and offer ways to bring the work to the bedside and engage the partnerships that already exist to make AMS programs successful.

Although all patients require vigilant infection prevention measures and the goal should always be zero infections, the stakes are sometimes higher in the NICU, as infections there have higher potential for death.

Xenon lamps produce pulsed flashes of germicidal UV light at wavelengths from 200-315 nm, killing microbes on environmental surfaces.

As the threat from COVID-19 increases, so must the readiness of infection preventionists to respond. 

The CDC is more pessimistic than the WHO about containing the novel coronavirus COVID-19.

Christina Tan, MD, MPH, state epidemiologist and assistant commissioner with the New Jersey Department of Health, discusses the current coronavirus outbreak and how infection prevention efforts can help curb its spread.

Infection control specialists need to know how to successfully design and implement an effective infection prevention program.

“These estimates are reassuring,” says Brendan Flannery, PhD, the CDC’s investigator for the US Flu Vaccine Effectiveness Network.

Hospital administrators and infection preventionists have to contend with diversity among C. diff isolates.

Health officials say that this is a particularly bad year for an extended influenza season since flu symptoms and some of the symptoms of the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, are the same (fever, cough, shortness of breath).

The agency uses an emergency use authorization to allow distribution of the diagnostic kits. 

The World Health Organization has just declared the outbreak a global health emergency.

In this uncertain time of constantly changing news and updates that often stress response efforts, it is important to focus on opportunities for prevention and ensuring staff have the right information.

Nancy Messonnier, MD, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases: "The situation is evolving rapidly."

Testing on human subjects could begin in 3 months.

But “it may become one yet,” warns WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Panel of WHO health experts will reconvene tomorrow.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, MD, the director-general of WHO, said that “never has the threat of antimicrobial resistance been more immediate and the need for solutions more urgent."

Health officials closely monitoring the situation.

Rebecca Leach, RN, BSN, MPH, CIC, speaks to Infection Control Today about dealing with respiratory illnesses during the flu season.