The Infection Control Today® personal protective equipment page offers written and video content on the proper use and—during the time of COVID-19 surges—reuse of PPE, including masks, respirators, gloves, gowns, face shields, goggles, and more. What are the proper donning and doffing methods? How long can PPE be extended? How are these items decontaminated? What comprises proper fit testing? Our experts will tell you.
April 30th 2024
Opinion: Kevin Kavanagh, MD, examines a summary of studies on how COVID-19 may damage the brain's frontal lobes, alter personality traits and cognitive functions, and potentially reshape society's dynamics.
Medical Crossfire®: Maximizing Patient Outcomes in Shingles – Are You Leveraging Guideline Based Care?
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Understanding RSV: What You Need to Know to Prevent and Treat Respiratory Syncytial Virus in Your Patients
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Respiratory Syncytial Virus: Understanding the Infection Burden and Anticipating the Impact of Vaccines
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Medical Crossfire®: Which Patients with Hematologic Malignancies are at Risk for Secondary Immunodeficiency (SID)… and How Can We Leverage Evidence to Improve Their Outcomes?
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Patient, Provider, and Caregiver Connection™: Prevention and Control of Meningococcal Disease — Individualizing Vaccine Recommendations in Adolescent Populations
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Environmental Services Workers Need to be Certified
November 2nd 2021Darrel Hicks: “EVS teams work around professionals who are certified—whether it’s respiratory therapists, physical therapists, the RNs, the doctors—and I think if we ever hoped to elevate their status that we need to certify environmental services workers to a certain level of knowledge before they even start cleaning patient rooms.”
Gathering Storm: Future Without Antibiotics Is Coming at Us
July 9th 2021Heather Saunders MPH, RN, CIC: “I think [infection preventionists] really need to be aware of what the efforts are at their state health departments and how they can collaborate with those efforts. IPs need to also have their own surveillance systems in place. They need to know what they’re looking for.”
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.
CDC Eases Mask Guidance for Vaccinated Individuals in Outdoor Settings
April 27th 2021Individuals vaccinated against COVID-19 do not need to wear a mask outdoors when in small groups, when dining outside, or when biking or running, the CDC announced. However, face-covering precautions should still be taken in some settings.
What Infection Preventionists Can Expect in 2021
December 31st 20202021 will likely mean a mixture of things for infection preventionists (IPs). First, a focused effort on vaccine education. While this is a larger effort, IPs have always played a significant role in education and answering questions while rounding on the units and clinics.
Better Protection from COVID Needed for Providers
December 30th 2020Kristy Warren: “We need to do everything we can to help protect our providers when performing these aerosol generating procedures. And subsequently those providers that enter the room or exit the room after these procedures have occurred.”
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.
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.
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.”
Revisiting the ‘Powder Keg’ of COVID’s First Days
October 30th 2020“[T]here is a need for early education to enforce correct PPE use to alleviate personal risk concerns. This includes re-education of the donning and doffing of PPE to confirm staff are effectively protecting themselves. Data suggests substantial self-contamination risk occurs when doffing PPE….”