Weekly Rounds with Infection Control Today: Recruiting Infection Preventionists

Here are 5 highlights from ICT^®’s wide-ranging coverage of the infection prevention and control world. Everything from interviews with known opinion leaders, to the news that infection preventionists and other health care professionals can use on their jobs.

Short on Infection Preventionists? Call Some Out of Retirement

Holly Taylor, MPH, CIC: Using retired IPs can “create a little bit more bandwidth within the department when you have potentially prolonged vacancies because we do know that IP staffing vacancies last longer than other health care vacancies.”

Onboarding Novice (and Higher Level) Infection Preventionists

An infection prevention and control department overseeing 28 hospitals created a manual that allowed infection preventions at all levels of experience to function optimally during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Battling C. Auris and COVID-19 at Same Time

Elizabeth Jefferson, PhD, CIC: “You have to really pay attention and make sure that it [Candida auris] stays contained so that you don’t have an outbreak. It just takes one case.”

One Quarter of U.S. Nursing Homes Might Not be Here by Next Year

Almost half of nursing homes and assisted living facilities are operating at a loss, while 84% of nursing homes are losing revenue this year because fewer post-acute patients are coming to them from hospitals.

APIC Backs Mandatory COVID-19 Vaccines for Health Care Workers

The primary organization representing the infection preventionists who often coordinate vaccination efforts at hospitals says that COVID-19 vaccines should be mandatory.