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In findings that may set a new standard of care in intensive care units, researchers demonstrated in a large-scale trial that a combination of daily chlorhexidine baths and a five-day regimen of nasal mupirocin reduced bloodstream infections (BSIs) for all pathogens by a staggering 44%.
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Martin A. Makary, MD, MPH, an associate professor of surgery and health policy at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD is the author of the recently published book "Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won't Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care."
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No specific infection control breach has been identified in the death earlier this year of a 25-year-old research laboratory associate at the VA Medical Center in San Francisco.
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Researchers are finding that a specific spectrum of ultraviolet light kills drug-resistant bacteria and other problem pathogens on common environmental surfaces, including door handles and bedside tables and rails in hospital rooms.
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As the lines blur between patient safety and worker safety, employee health professionals including those "two-hat" infection preventionists with dual responsibilities can expect much more scrutiny from regulators who traditionally focused on patient care.
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Memo to the Centers from Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) from two leading surgeons on the literal cutting edge of infection prevention in the OR: Hospitals and federal regulators should encourage the use of newer and safer types of surgery and more transparency with patients on procedure options and possible outcomes. That would do more to reduce surgical site infection (SSI) rates than inspections by CMS and other government regulators.
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The Veterans Health Administration has developed best practices in handling large-scale epidemiologic look-back investigations, including finding a way to explain a potential exposure of blood-borne viruses to a large number of people who likely were not impacted by the incident.
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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) continues to develop an infection control survey slated for use in the nation's hospitals later this year, using expert feedback and "pre-testing" results from the field to create a 42-page tool that assesses a wide breadth of program issues.
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Recently I've chosen a major change in job responsibilities. For the second time I'm the sole Infection Preventionist (IP) for a facility, but this time the realm of 'Quality' is included, and my facility is a 32-bed surgical hospital including a four-bed ICU. It was time to challenge myself to keep learning new approaches to age-old problems surrounding patient safety. Talk about moving out of the comfort zone!
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"By the time we learned this was a problem around the country, the information from Tennessee had already narrowed it down to what the problem was. [It was] a textbook case of how to do it right." Paul Jarris, MD, executive director of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials.
