Hospital Infection Control & Prevention – August 1, 2009
August 1, 2009
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HIN1 vaccine could heighten calls for mandatory flu shots for health workers
With more hospitals in recent years considering mandatory seasonal flu immunizations for health care workers, the rise and highly anticipated seasonal resurgence of H1N1 influenza A raises a compelling question: Will the first pandemic in 41 years add momentum to increasing calls to make flu immunization a condition of health care employment?Nosocomial flu infection: An unresolved patient death
In reviewing the risk of seasonal influenza and the controversial question of health care worker immunization, Thomas Talbot, MD, MPH, paused on a mysterious case study an 'N of 1," if you will, that suggests patients come into hospitals and die of influenza contracted during treatment.Mandating flu shots: Lessons from front lines
Infection preventionists and their employee health colleagues undertaking a mandated program to immunize health care workers against flu invariably will run into four groups of people:Contact precautions: A sacred cow?
Some infection preventionists have raised concerns about the unintended consequences of contact isolation in hospitals, which are often tied to active screening cultures to detect particular pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus(MRSA).Cal MRSA law raises decolonization issue
State laws passed in the name of patient safety may straddle infection prevention programs with mandates that ultimately are counterproductive, an infection preventionist warned recently in Fort Lauderdale, FL, at the annual conference of the Association for Prevention of Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).Abstract & Commentary: Chlorhexidine sponges reduce catheter infections
Timsit et al conducted a 2x2 randomized, controlled trial comparing chlorhexidine-impregnated sponges in the dressing of vascular catheters with control dressings.iPNewbe: What's in an infection definition? Everything.
Ah, the good old days when infections were classified as "nosocomial" (hospital-acquired) or not. There wasn't anything else but "we didn't do this thing" or "yes, this is our infection because we gave this to this person at our hospital."Wisdom Teachers: IP as change agent: Be an enemy of the status quo
With the move to "targeting zero" infections and abandoning benchmark ranges comes a new role for the infection preventionists: agent of change.