The Infection Control Today® chronic and long-term care facilities page provides news, updates, and guidance on tackling infection prevention in these unique environments, including nursing homes, skilled nursing centers, and assisted-living facilities. This page includes news on cleaning, disinfection, antibiotic stewardship, hand hygiene, isolation precautions, outbreak protocol, and more as administrators and infection prevention teams seek to curb outbreaks of pneumonia, influenza, Clostridioides difficile, urinary tract infections, and skin and soft tissue infections, among others.
September 18th 2024
A recent study explores individual, organizational, and environmental factors influencing home care providers' adherence to facial protective equipment (FPE) to improve future pandemic preparedness.
IPC Pros Helping Other: Engaging Staff Through an Infection Prevention and Control Educational Fair
August 3rd 2023In this installment of IPC Pros Helping Each Other, a long-term care infection preventionists in New Hampshire describes the IPC educational fair her facility organized for the rest of the staff. Michele M, director of nursing services, said, “[The educational fair] was a creative and interactive way to engage staff in infection control education.”
Special Report on Candida auris: An Emerging Drug-Resistant Fungal Threat
June 14th 2023The recent increase in drug-resistant strains of Candida auris, causing mortality at rates as high as 60%, raises questions regarding the spread of this pathogen as a health care-associated infection, cleaning/disinfecting protocol, and treatment via antifungal drugs.
Delving into the Scabies Outbreak Within an Inpatient Rehabilitation Setting
June 12th 2023An outbreak investigation in the American Journal of Infection Control reviews the infection control procedures implemented by an academic medical center in response to a patient's introduction of scabies to health care workers.
CDC Discusses Candida auris: Strategies to Help Control and Prevent Outbreaks
May 5th 2023To control C auris, focus on using antibiotics and improving diagnostics. New treatments in development offer hope for better management. This is the fourth and final installment in CDC's interview with the ICT.
LTC Facilities Face Unique Infection Control Issues During COVID-19 Pandemic
November 29th 2022Integrating home and community, long-term care facilities are supposed to be a haven for patients and their families. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, keeping the patients and the staff safe was a constant battle. An infection preventionist who lived through it discusses the challenges at her facility.
How to Obtain Better Hand Hygiene Adherence: Ideas From Health Care Workers on the Floor
September 29th 2022Many studies have been done on how to increase hand hygiene adherence. However, ICT® decided to go to the source and ask the health care workers themselves why they do not always follow hand hygiene.
Fractured Trust: Learning Lessons From COVID-19 to Prevent Monkeypox
September 9th 2022How much information should the public have about infectious diseases? Can the public handle the truth? If the correct information is not given out, will the public believe the medical leaders when another serious disease threatens the public’s health? Ambassador Deborah Birx, MD, continues her discussion with ICT.
Boots on the Ground, or These Boots Are Made for Walking? Some LTC Staff Choose the Latter
September 7th 2022Long-term care facilities were once normally happier places, but COVID-19 changed the individuals working and living there. PPEs, testing, overwork, underpayment, and too many isolations have chased health care workers away and forced the facilities' population to plummet. Can anything be done?
No Catheter. No CAUTI: Urine Management with External Catheters
September 5th 2022Prolonged catheter use is the number 1 risk factor for developing catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). External urine collection devices are an alternative to indwelling catheters for managing urinary incontinence.