April 11th 2024
A JAMA study exposes the US healthcare system's staggering waste expenditure underlining challenges in managing diverse waste types and stringent regulations' compliance. What solutions are there?
February 29th 2024
COVID-19 Model Says 905,289 Died of the Disease in U.S.
May 8th 2021Infection preventionists need to stress the importance of aerosolization with increased recommendations for N-95 masks and we all need to realize that a prerequisite of reopening a business, school or public venue should be safe ventilation.
COVID-19 Underscores Nurses’ Role in Infection Prevention
April 28th 2021Nurses need a seat at the table when discussing PPE stockpiling and purchasing practices to share their lived experiences and help the team discover where practice deviated from plans. Infection preventionists should support the nurses in these discussions as allies.
N95 Decontamination Process Allows 25 Reusages
April 16th 2021Christina Yen, MD: “For any infection preventionists who are thinking about or are reviewing the need for VHP sometime in the future, just know that those colleagues that we’ve relied on this time around are going to be there and are going to be your partners in the VHP process.”
How COVID-19 Spread the Word About Infection Prevention
March 18th 2021Sharon Ward-Fore, MS, MT(ASCP), CIC: "We’ve learned the hard way that restaurants, office settings, hair salons, fitness centers, and schools have really suffered for the lack of guidance by professionals like infection preventionists."
Q&A: Thanks to COVID, Masks Are Here to Stay
February 23rd 2021Daniel Burnett, MD, MBA: “The aerosols, the things that are the true danger and that can hang in the air for hours, depending on their size, are still released around the edges and around the nose of cloth masks. A cloth mask does very little to protect you.”
Year Zero: How COVID-19 Changed Everything
December 23rd 2020Though 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.
A Great Divide: Kansans Line Up on Opposite Sides of a Mask Mandate
December 8th 2020What’s the matter with Kansas? Well, for one thing, counties could choose whether to follow state health department guidelines on masking. COVID-19 case-count differences between counties that did and those that didn’t is striking.
Viewpoint: Healthcare Workers Not Being Protected from COVID
November 16th 2020Faced with greater than three times the number of cases as the last surge, along with exponential growth with no end in sight, there is little hope healthcare workers can safely treat patients without a drastic change in policy and a more productive and secure supply line.
Creating Guidelines for Hospital Donations During the COVID-19 Pandemic
November 12th 2020If you are an infection preventionist and are not currently involved in product review, now may be a great time to reach out to your supply chain team to explain the perspective you can bring to the table and ask to be involved.
Q&A: Stamp Personal Protective Equipment with ‘Made in America’
November 3rd 2020Ashish Diwanji: “The personal protective equipment made and sold in the US has to abide by the standards set up by NIOSH …. The PPE made and sold from China do adhere to the Chinese standards, but their standards are different than ours.”