Infection Control
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Pandemic Presenteeism: CA Says HCWs with COVID-19 Can Skip Isolation
A California public health policy allowing asymptomatic healthcare workers with COVID-19 to remain on duty sparked outrage among some nurses, who say it threatens their prime mission to protect and care for patients. -
Infection Prevention Tips for Omicron Variant
As omicron swept through the nation, creating chaos at hospitals, the Infectious Diseases Society of America made four major suggestions for how organizations and individuals can prevent infection and serious illness. -
Sick Healthcare Workers Worsen Shortage, May Spike Healthcare-Associated Infections
The COVID-19 omicron variant, known to cause breakthrough infections in those fully vaccinated and boosted, is infecting and furloughing healthcare workers even as hospitals face a towering wave of incoming patients.
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Missed Nursing Care and Declining Patient Safety
While the immediate effect of the COVID-19 omicron variant on the healthcare workforce is the pressing issue, there were serious concerns about staff shortages and the effect of “missed nursing care” on patients well before the pandemic. Missed nursing care is defined as delaying, omitting, or rationing care by nursing staff. -
Worker Safety Is Critical to Patient Safety
As the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates the national nursing shortage, healthcare workers are finally seen as a valuable commodity that should not be routinely lost to injuries trying to manually lift and mobilize patients. Ultimately, understanding worker safety equals patient safety improves the well-being of an organization. -
Are Boosters Prolonging the Pandemic?
Some people have raised the question of whether booster shots are unethical from a global perspective, and even counterproductive to ending the pandemic because highly mutated variants will continue to arise in unvaccinated patients. -
Winter of Our Discontent: Omicron Variant Pushes Healthcare to Brink
With omicron causing much higher breakthrough infection rates than previous COVID-19 variants, there is concern infected healthcare workers must isolate amid an ongoing nursing shortage. The previous recommendation for 10 days has been changed to seven, and shorter than that under certain conditions. -
Screening Ineffective for Identifying HCWs with Respiratory Illness
Ubiquitous employee temperature screening and symptom questions upon entry during the pandemic have not yielded much success in identifying sick healthcare workers and reducing the long-standing problem of presenteeism. -
Nirmatrelvir and Ritonavir Tablets (Paxlovid)
The FDA has issued an emergency use authorization for the first oral regimen for the treatment of COVID-19.
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AAP Recommends Routine HIV Screening, Prevention for All Teens, At-Risk Youth
The organization advises pediatricians to create safe spaces that allow frank discussions of sensitive topics.