Hospital Infection Control & Prevention
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APIC Continues Fight, Urging CMS to Upgrade ICP in Nursing Homes
The Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology continues to vigorously argue that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services needs to significantly upgrade infection control in nursing homes.
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Welcome to the Briar Patch: Ethics of Antibiotic Stewardship
Applying ethical concepts to infection control and infectious disease issues, helps infection preventionists and infectious disease physicians reframe problems and develop “moral resilience” to make tough choices, said Olivia Kates, MD, MA, an infectious disease professor and director of research ethics at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
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Healing HCWs — Including IPs — Is a National Priority for CDC, NIOSH
Burnout among all stripes of healthcare workers — including infection preventionists — has become a dire situation warranting national action. Accordingly, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health have released new research and emphasized available resources to raise awareness for an ambitious “system change” in healthcare delivery.
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CDC Draft Revamps Airborne Precautions, Calls for N95s
New draft patient isolation guidelines recently approved by advisors to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention call for scrapping the “outdated dichotomy” of droplet/airborne precautions in favor of a “continuum” approach to stop transmission through the air.
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Necessity and Reinvention: APIC Tries to Hire, Retain IPs
As a generation of infection preventionists (IPs) near career end, it is well to remember that many of them tell a similar story of how they got into the profession. Often, they were working some other clinical job and an opening or temporary need came up in the infection control department. To paraphrase what Hospital Infection Control & Prevention has reported time and again from new IPs to long-established leaders in the field, “I just fell into it and I loved it. I found it fascinating.”
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Incentivizing New Antibiotics to Kill Multidrug-Resistant Bugs
Bacteria have developed resistance to so many antibiotics that a familiar adage about these lifesaving drugs is “use ’em and lose ’em.” Ideas to break this cycle and create a market for new antibiotics include the proposed PASTEUR (Pioneering Antimicrobial Subscriptions To End Upsurging Resistance) Act of 2023, which has been reintroduced in Congress.
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Joint Commission: If You Create Infection Control Policy, Make Sure You Follow It
If infection preventionists adopt or write up an infection control policy — even if it goes beyond existing recommendations and requirements — The Joint Commission will cite or “score” them if the hospital is not following it. Do not put in word what you will not follow in deed, said Sylvia Garcia-Houchins, MBA, RN, CIC, director of infection prevention and control at The Joint Commission.
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Respiratory Triple Play: Vaccination Is the Key
As a trifecta of viruses converge this fall and winter, the United States has an unprecedented infection control counterpunch: vaccines for the 2023-2024 flu season, new shots for respiratory syncytial virus, and the latest formula to protect against COVID-19.
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APIC: SCOTUS Race Ruling: ‘Willfully Ignores’ Challenges Minorities Still Face
The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling that race cannot be a factor in college, medical, and nursing school admissions was, if nothing else, tone-deaf. The ruling came in the simmering aftermath of a three-year pandemic that exposed widespread inequity in healthcare, and gave rise to the perception of “institutionalized racism” in medicine.
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CDC Recommends RSV Vaccine for Patients in Third Trimester
The agency says this solution should be administered to patients during weeks 32 through 36 of pregnancy to protect babies against the dangerous virus, both before and shortly after birth.