The national opioid epidemic is causing daily overdoses in the community, diversion drug thefts by healthcare workers, and now a dangerous new aspect at the bedside: Hospitalized patients are injecting illicit drugs and hoarded medications directly into their placed IV lines.
After a series of highly publicized drug diversion incidents by healthcare workers and patient outbreaks in Colorado in recent years, the state has passed a law that requires surgical technologists to register and submit to background checks.
As this issue went to press, public health officials in Miami confirmed the first local cases of Zika transmission in the United States via mosquitoes.
Zika virus is proving nothing if not unpredictable as we now also have a strange case of apparent transmission to a caregiver from a dying patient as well as the first documented case of apparent female-to-male sexual transmission.
Two recent developments limiting antibiotic use could have a secondary benefit of reducing Clostridium difficile infections, which have been the bane of infection preventionists since emerging in a highly virulent strain some 15 years ago.
Unable to determine the source of an inexplicable outbreak of Elizabethkingiaanopheles in Wisconsin and two other states, investigators are inviting the survivors of the infection to participate in focus groups and see if they can find a common link that preceded their illness.
