Tori Whitacre Martonicz

Two patients were found with C auris in the CVAHCS beginning in October 2020, and a recent study describes how the facility handled the situation.

The 50-year-old Association for Professionals and Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) gives many tools to aid infection preventionists at any stage of their career with education, networking, and an annual conference.

In all areas, infection preventionists took on more responsibilities and expanded the ones they already had, including staff education and employee health.

Despite the initial reluctance for a urology team to work with infection preventionists, the collaboration is beneficial for both specialties.

They should be partners making each other and their patients safe through communication, education, and action plans.

If the policies are not consistently updated, they are “just a piece of paper shoved in a logbook that is not going to effectively improve reprocessing…of ultrasound probes,” said Lisa Waldowski, DNP, RN, CIC.

This recommendation comes at an critical time as this flu season is feared to be a rebound after the low numbers the last few years due to COVID-19 precautions.

Infection preventionists should take an active role supporting ambulatory partners to help them follow infection prevention and control practices.

Eradicating pathogens on both the floors throughout the hospital, especially patients’ rooms, and within the NICU isolettes is the focus of 2 posters presented at APIC 2022.

Investigators look for and find MRSA and C difficil widespread on floors, especially in patient rooms, and MRSA inside NICU isolette beds.

Recently, investigators studied the correlation between antibiotic use and antibiotic resistance using the J-SIPHE system. The results suggest that using the system may be beneficial for promoting antibiotic resistance measures antimicrobial stewardship implementation.

An IP can use their expertise to make decisions that will lead to cost savings and improved design flow.

The encouraging method used in the facility to raise the percentages was the answer to creating a positive response from the team.

Collaboration of a team from Inova Health with La Forma Medical developed an isolation gown that was cooler, better fitting, and more environmentally-friendly than disposables.

One key opinion leader speaks of infection prevention challenges with prone patients and benefits of centralized surveillance systems in 2 separate presentations at the APIC 2022 annual conference.

The infection preventionist’s role extends far beyond simply surveillance activities and into an integrated member of design and operations.

Despite the emphasis on more improved infection prevention practices, stethoscope hygiene continually falls short, possibly leading to more health care-acquired infections.

From language barriers to lack of equipment, environmental hygiene is suffering throughout the world.

Respiratory syncytial virus does have a monoclonal antibody; however, the cost limits the distribution to the highest income countries, and a more cost-effective preventative strategy is needed.

Over 50 health care facilities from 35 countries participated from both higher and lower income settings.

Biosafety risks for patients with SARS-CoV-2 may be overlooked, and some control measures may bring about cross-contamination of the tests being done and cause biosafety accidents.

AMR and surgical site infections are a consistent issue for surgeries, and often surgeons feel they have done everything they can to reduce the risk, and yet the event still occurs with an alarming frequency. Is there anything novel that can be done? ICT® tries to find out.

Certain blood types in combination with Rh, race (Black patients and White patients), and pregnant or not pregnant demonstrated protection against the virus.

Bug of the Month helps educate readers about existing and emerging pathogens of clinical importance in health care facilities today.

Device-associated HAIs were likely impacted by the continued alteration of hospital practices that occurred throughout the pandemic.

Regardless of vaccination status, health care workers were protected with daily and regular hydrogen peroxide antisepsis.

However, respiratory HAVIs continued to be reported, despite elevated prevention practices, leaving young, susceptible patients threatened.

Patients with home infusion therapy have improved outcomes when home health care agencies and acute care facilities communicate relevant information on their shared patients.

Despite various techniques that health care facilities use to facilitate 100% hand hygiene compliance from their health care workers, barriers still must be overcome.

A new comprehensive article lays out best practice guidelines for 14 areas of infection prevention and control.