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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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Influenza poses a rare but real risk of fatal infection in otherwise healthy children, a Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention epidemiologist reports.
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Preventing bloodstream infections among the most costly and potentially fatal patient complications provides a benefit so powerful that one is tempted to dismiss the risk.
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Although efforts to cut the overuse of antibiotics have made some headway in hospitals, the majority of prescriptions are written by community-based clinicians often for pediatric patients with common ailments.
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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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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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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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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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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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Your influenza vaccination campaign is coming into the public spotlight, and that means more pressure than ever on the logistics of administering and tracking those vaccinations.