-
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention offered additional guidance on policies related to exposed or ill health care workers:
-
In its updated guidance on infection control measures and 2009 H1N1 influenza virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention urges health care facilities to use a hierarchy of controls and provides examples of measures they should take.
-
Faced with the prospect of a citation by the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, hospitals are adjusting to the updated federal guidance to use fit-tested N95 respirators when caring for 2009 H1N1 patients.
-
Particulate respirators a controversial step beyond common surgical masks are now mandated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to protect health care workers from acquiring H1N1 pandemic influenza A from patients.
-
A misguided federal mandate that health care workers don N95 respirators to treat known or suspect H1N1 influenza A patients is critically undermining the medical response to the first pandemic in four decades, clinicians tell Hospital Infection Control & Prevention.
-
Infection prevention is a top priority of an ambitious new quality improvement effort that could lead to new accreditation standards for the nation's hospitals, says Mark R. Chassin, MD, MPP, MPH, president of The Joint Commission.
-
The American Industrial Hygiene Association (AIHA) has issued a position statement on H1N1 pandemic influenza A that endorses and reiterates the key findings of an Institute of Medicine panel that recommended N95 respirators for health care workers. Key points stressed by AIHA include:
-
Talk about peer review. Rarely do medical researchers have their specific papers described to the president of the United States, but that is the case for two studies playing a central role in the national furor over surgical masks vs. respirators for H1N1 protection.
-
The nation's leading infection prevention groups are urging President Barack Obama to halt federal enforcement of a mandate that health care workers wear N95 respirators to treat H1N1 pandemic patients.
-
The Joint Commission (TJC) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights announced that "amid growing concerns about racial, ethnic, and language disparities in health care, "the organizations have developed a video titled "Improving Patient-Provider Communication."