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Fewer than half of health care workers receive their annual influenza immunization, according to federal surveys, despite a growing call for flu shots to protect patients as well as employees. Each year, hospitals gear up for annual flu campaigns but find they can spur little improvement in vaccination rates.
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Every year, the basic message is the same: Get your flu shot. But hospitals around the country have found innovative ways to market that message - and get the attention of health care workers. Here are a few campaigns highlighted by the Joint Commission in its recent monograph on influenza vaccination.
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An advisory panel is recommending less stringent infection control precautions for novel H1N1, but the move is just one step in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examination of the issue.
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Stockpiling of personal protective equipment is an important component of pandemic planning. But how do you know just how many respirators to stockpile?
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The nuts and bolts of pandemic planning involve quantifiable items: Ventilators, respirators, antiviral medications, vaccine doses. But in the midst of drills and stockpiles and vaccine campaigns, don't forget about the psychosocial needs of your frontline employees.
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The Joint Commission is calling on health care administrators to take the lead in preventing infections with multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs), reminding them that current patient safety goals require CEOs to take responsibility for implementing programs to prevent these deadly and costly outcomes.
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The Joint Commission takes on the controversial issue of decolonization of patients carrying multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) in a new report aimed at health care CEOs. With more hospitals adopting active surveillance cultures to detect MDROs, the question of attempting to decolonize patients has become controversial due to issues of cost and long-term efficacy.
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National health care reform must include a quality component - including preventing health care-associated infections - if it is to become an effective and affordable reality, Mark R. Chassin, MD, president of The Joint Commission, notes in a commentary posted on the Joint Commission web site.
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Major reform of the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration may be delayed by the ailing economy, but it is inevitable as the agency needs to adapt to the workplace realities of the 21st century, according to the former heads of OSHA and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
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They say necessity is the mother of invention. But for health care providers, the inspiration for new safe patient handling devices has come from pain and discomfort and the desire to protect their colleagues from injury.
