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Gary S. Marshall, MD; Shanna M. Barton, MD; Theresa M. Fiorito, MD

Patient, Provider, and Caregiver Connection™: Prevention and Control of Meningococcal Disease — Individualizing Vaccine Recommendations in Adolescent Populations

 operating room page provides news articles and videos on the intersection between surgery and infection prevention. The operating room is a prime breeding ground for harmful pathogens to spread, resulting in surgical site infections. The role of the infection preventionist, together with the perioperative nursing staff, is to craft policies and processes to cut down on these infections and ensure patient safety during surgical procedures. 

 Surgical instrument errors, often linked to visualization failures during sterile processing, pose significant risks to patient safety and OR efficiency. Advanced technologies, including AI, are essential for reducing these errors and improving overall outcomes in sterile processing departments.

Addressing Sterile Processing Instrument Errors With Advanced Technology and Data Insights 

Read this informative article on mitigating central line-associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs) in acute care settings, which is crucial for enhancing patient safety.


CLABSI Prevention in the Post-COVID-19 Era

Effective implementation of UV-C disinfection is crucial to reducing HAIs. The Providence Holy Cross Medical Center achieved a 19% reduction in multidrug-resistant HAIs and saved $1.2 million through strategic deployment, highlighting the importance of collaboration and innovative management.

Closing the Gap: Maximizing the Potential of UV-C Technology to Reduce Health Care-Associated Infections

Pneumonia, a leading cause of death from health care-acquired infections, can be prevented through oral care, especially in nonventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia (NV-HAP) cases.

Back to the Future—Focus on Oral Care for Preventing Pneumonia

Infection Control Today® speaks with the 2023 Infection Control Today’s Educator of the Year Award™ winner, Sharon Ward-Fore, MS, MT,(ASCP), CIC, FAPIC

About the Infection Control Today's Educator of the Year Award

Preventing overtreatement from C difficile with Rachel Guran, MPH

Cloistriodides difficile with Rachel Guran, MPH

 (AJIC) describes the outcome of a new approach to testing for 

 based on diagnostic stewardship principles. At Memorial Healthcare System in Hollywood, Florida, updated guidelines for ordering 

 tests led to a 20% reduction in inappropriate testing, ultimately helping to prevent patient overtreatment.

) spoke with Rachel Guran, MPH, BSN, RN, CIC, FAPIC, director of epidemiology and infection prevention at Memorial Healthcare System and an author of the study, “Impact of an electronic smart order-set for diagnostic stewardship of 

 infection (CDI) in a community healthcare system in South Florida.”

In this interview, Guran explains why the study was done, what the principles of diagnostic stewardship are, and how they were applied in this study to revise 

“Diagnostic stewardship is definitely a journey that many health care systems have been on for a while just like our partners in pharmacy and antimicrobial stewardship, we focus on with lab to partner to make sure that patients have the right test for the right reasons at the right time, for the right outcomes,” Guran said. “There are many benefits to diagnostic stewardship from the tests are able to better perform if they're used for what they're indicated for. So better results, more accurate results, cost savings, better for the patient that we're not doing unnecessary tests on them. This was a multidisciplinary effort to try to increase our diagnostic stewardship efforts at Memorial.”

asked what insights Guran and her fellow investigators learned from investigating this trend and how future guidelines might address this issue. “By focusing the study on patients who were symptomatic, as that was the appropriate indication for 

ficile. So we did find those patients once that algorithm was it, the education from the algorithm was in place, and then that electronic order stopped the inappropriate ordering. Patients who did not have signs and symptoms [or] patients who [recently] had laxatives. That is what we saw a decrease in, and that's exactly the goal we were going for…our NHSN rates have been amazing, and we saw a huge decrease in the amount of reportable 

Check out the rest of the interview to find out how to use this study to improve your facility’s unnecessary treatment of C difficile.

A Memorial Healthcare study shows updated C difficile testing guidelines led to a 20% reduction in inappropriate tests, improving diagnostic accuracy and preventing unnecessary treatments.

Reducing Inappropriate C difficile Testing: A Diagnostic Stewardship Success Story

’s) wide-ranging coverage of the infection prevention and control world. Everything from interviews with known opinion leaders to the news that infection preventionists and other health care professionals can use on their jobs.

Dear Helpdesk: Uplifting Team Morale During Financial Uncertainty and Layoff Threats

Maintaining team morale during financial instability and potential layoffs requires clear communication, emotional support, and professional development opportunities to reassure and retain valuable team members.

USDA Proposes New Regulations to Reduce Salmonella in Poultry

The USDA aims to enhance food safety and public health while maintaining cost-effectiveness and ensuring safer poultry products by implementing targeted monitoring and a phased compliance approach.

NIH Study: Routine Lab Tests Ineffective for Diagnosing Long COV

A recent National Institutes of Health study reveals that routine lab tests are ineffective for diagnosing long COVID, highlighting the urgent need for novel biomarkers to identify and treat the condition accurately.

WHO Declares Mpox Surge in DRC a Global Health Emergency, Calls for Urgent International Action; APIC Responds

WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros declared the outbreak of monkeypox in DRC and other African countries a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. APIC provides a tool for infection preventionists and epidemiologists.

Meet Infection Control Today's Editorial Board Member: Henry Spratt, Jr, PhD

Meet the experts shaping infection prevention: Infection Control Today's Editorial Board members share insights, experiences, and cutting-edge strategies to enhance health care safety and quality. Meet Henry Spratt, Jr, PhD.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today®’s highlights for the week ending August 17, 2024.

Weekly Rounds: With Mpox Surging,  WHO and APIC Respond, and More

Infection Preventionists Advocate for Improved Medical Device Instructions for Use (IFUs)

Recently, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) published the 

Modernizing Medical Device Instructions for Use(IFUs): Infection Preventionists Speak Up for Patient Safety

,” which illuminates the complexities, inefficiencies, and frustrations associated with IFUs. IPs have expressed concerns about the need for more clarity, outdated information, brand-specific instructions, and contradictions between device specifications and IFUs. These challenges consume valuable time and pose risks to patient safety.

, MLS, BS, CIC, FAPIC, vice chair of APIC's Public Policy Committee, to learn more about IPs' challenges with IFUs, 

Marie H. Wilson, MSN, RN, CIC, FAPIC, is an infection Preventionist in the Quality Division at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, Washington, and the 2024 APIC Communications Committee chair.

Heather Ridge, BS, BSN, RN, CCHW, CIC, system infection prevention outpatient manager for Novant Health, Inc, in North Carolina. She is also the 2024 vice chair of the APIC Communications Committee.

Michelle W. King, MT(ASCP), MPH, CIC, is the corporate director of infection prevention and control for the Department of Epidemiology at the McLeod Health System in Florence, South Carolina, and a member of the APIC Communications Committee.

Each IP gave examples of stories of challenging issues they have had with IFUs.

“For me, this white paper is the culmination of many years of IPs' experience being a middle person between manufacturers and regulators in terms of the appropriate use of devices in the healthcare setting, and important to us is their cleaning and disinfection,” Wilson said. “So, there have been a number of issues that have been identified in the white paper that are going to resonate with infection preventionists that read it through our experiences in health care, even maybe before we were IPs in health care, and so I appreciate APIC taking this step to recognize that we are just messengers in this process. And we need some support from the manufacturers and regulators for real, sustainable change to improve the health care safety environment.”

King agreed, “One of the most important parts of the white paper was their recommendations. That standardized format for IFUs and making the IFUs last for the lifespan of the product indicate when the IFP was last updated because that's important as well. One of my pet peeves was making sure that you're not too vendor-specific on the products that are recommended for cleaning.”

All 3 IPs agreed that APIC’s paper on IFUs was comprehensive and well laid out. Ridge said, “The action plan is just perfectly in line [with] where we need to go, especially as an organization for infection prevention…. The only thing I would like to hear a little bit more focus on is that we have this great partnership with our vendors, and we are very active with our sponsors and our national committee. However, we push that relationship that the vendors need to have and know about infection prevention because sometimes it goes beyond just a sellable product. It's what's feasible for the end user to do. They're not always in the same, again, same understanding as we do. So, to make sure that vendors understand what's out there, what's normal, how do we partner together, and we're going to ask questions, and it's going to take a while to have that collaboration in place.”

IPs discuss APIC's white paper, which highlights IPs frustrations with outdated and unclear medical device IFUs and the challenges they face.

Video on health care training and techniques to remember it. 

Making Patient Safety Stick: AORN 2024

Ensuring patient safety is just as essential as maintaining staff safety in health care. However, health care instructors often struggle with how to make their lessons memorable and impactful. During the AORN International Surgical Conference & Expo in 2024, Michael Sinnott, MBBS, FACEM, FRACP, gave an interesting presentation on this topic.

) spoke with Michael Sinnott, MBBS, FACEM, FRACP, cofounder, academic associate professor at The School of Medicine, University of Queensland; and adjunct associate professor of the Science and Engineering Faculty, Queensland University of Technology, at the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses’s (AORN’s) International Surgical Conference & Expo 2024.

Sinnott spoke on his presentation, “Stop the Snooze: Improve Technologies and Techniques for Making Safety Education Stick.”

As the title suggests, Sinnott explained key theories of adult education used to make education more interesting and engaging, ensure that the key messages stick longer, and are put into practice.

“We're doing it almost as a live workshop,” Sinnott told 

. “So, the four stages for designing and delivering an education session are, first of all, creating buy-in. Secondly, integrating interactivity. Third, encouraging collaboration. And lastly, including a competition. Our session will go through each of those 4 stages in the background while we present the information and carry out a [what is] really a short workshop where we will divide the audience into 4 [parts] and ask each of the 4 sections of the audience to come up with at least one way in which they're ascribed stage can be applied.”

Sinnott and his team hope that “the audience will take away some new knowledge and a new structure for designing their own education session. So, we believe that, during the talk, with this structure, they will be able to put their own uniqueness and individuality into creating those 4 different steps.”

 asked why Sinnott, who is from Australia, would come clear to Nashville to speak.

“There are 2 reasons. First of all, AORN is probably the largest and most influential professional group for perioperative nurses in the world. …[The] second main reason I'm here [is] that is because my colleagues [and I] all believe that we can't develop a good culture for patient safety if we don't have a good culture for staff safety. And we've been trying to put that message out there for probably 10 or 15 years. But it became much more obvious during the COVID-19 pandemic, where we saw that staff members who were sick, some even died.”

’s senior editor attended the session, and the audience's reaction was overwhelmingly positive. After discussion and collaboration on how to improve their assigned topic, a speaker from each section went to the microphone and told the rest of the session what their group had decided.

“Excellent idea!” one audience member said aloud in response to one of the suggestions. Then, in a simple yet positive move to remind the attendees of Sinnott’s presentation, his assistants gave out chocolate candies as they left the room. 

The conference ran from Saturday, March 9, to Tuesday, March 12, 2024. For all ICT’s coverage, 

During AORN's 2024 conference, Michael Sinnott, MBBS, FACEM, FRACP, shared insights on enhancing safety education's impact. Learn how to engage audiences and ensure lasting lessons in health care instruction.


Making Patient Safety Stick: Innovative Techniques From AORN 2024

perioperative nurses AORN2024 sterile processing department

Playing a game for perioperative nurses to learn about the sterile processing department

Perioperative nurses and other personnel in the operating room must work with the sterile processing department (SPD) to get the instruments required for the surgeries. However, do those personnel know what happens in the SPD? Do they understand the intricacies and the requirements that go into a successful SPD?

talks with John Kimsey, Steris's vice president of processing optimization and customer success, about his presentation and game at the Association of periOperative Registered Nurses (AORN) International Conference and Expo held from March 9 to 12, 2024, in Nashville, Tennessee.

The OR and SPD work together, but does the OR personnel know what the SPD does? In this exclusive interview, learn how this SPD simulation game came about, the key takeaways, and the 2 different forms of the game.

The conference runs from Saturday, March 9, to Tuesday, March 12, 2024. For all 

“It’s a hands-on audience participation SPD Simulation game that is super

fun and engaging that teaches people a lot about sterile processing. I’ll be running the game twice on Monday and twice on Tuesday.”

 asked Kimsey were to provide an overview of his presentation, the key points or findings that will be discussed, what inspired the presentation, and what he hopes attendees will take away from your presentation.

Lastly, what is he most looking forward to at the AORN conference this year?

Kimsey told ICT that his presentation is “more than just a presentation. AORN is trying to develop some skill studios that they call “Skills to Use Hands-on Learning” out in the Expo Hall.”

He said that Steris decided they would do a hands-on simulation of sterile processing in the Expo Hall. “This is a pretty big thing. It's 40 feet by 60 feet. It's a full-size replication of a sterile processing department. And we're going to have audience participation.”

Kimsey said that attendees participate in this game because it is fun. “it's learning about SPD, many aspects of SPD, from pretending to run an SPD and actually doing it. We have some push carts, [and] in the pushcarts [are] our instrument trays, a shoebox. And we use crayons for the instruments. We have an actual full-size SPD setup with tables that represent sinks, washers, assembly tables, sterilizers, card washers, and storage racks, and we have 200 shoe boxes or instrument trays. It's about 22 minutes long and is the actual simulation of an app to see if they can process all 200 trays in 22 minutes. And, of course, it's sped up, right? So, it's instant, taking 15 minutes to assemble a tray in real life. They'll have 30 seconds to assemble this. So it's like a 30 to 1 ratio time.”

It is educational for the participants and the audience because “there are a lot of things that [they learn] by playing the game; it's fun because you get to see people struggle with all these shoe boxes and crayons. After 22 minutes, we will talk about what we have learned.”

(Quotes have been edited for clarity. To hear the entire interview, watch above.)

Do operating room personnel understand the complexities of the sterile processing department? They rely on the sterile processing department for surgical instruments, but are they aware of its complexities and requirements?

Playing a Game for Perioperative Nurses About the Sterile Processing Department

ICT speaks with Erica Smith about infection prevention in the ASC

AORN Infection prevention in the ambulatory surgical center

Erica Smith, MBA, a doctoral candidate in public health and the global brand manager of infection prevention and control at Henry Schein, has a wealth of experience and a keen eye for common pitfalls. 

Her upcoming presentation at the AORN’s International Surgical Conference & Expo 2024 on Monday, March 11, from 11:30 AM—12:15 PM will be on the topic of “Infection Prevention in the ASC Environment of Care” and promises to illuminate crucial strategies for surgery centers and independent ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs). In this exclusive interview, 

) talks with Smith about her inspiration, key takeaways, and the pivotal role of infection control and prevention (IPC) in ensuring patient safety and operational efficiency.

The conference runs from Saturday, March 9, to Tuesday, March 12, 2024. For all ICT’s coverage, 

 asked Smith what her inspiration was for this year’s presentation. “Part of it was seeing that surgery centers needed a support system to help them with this topic, infection prevention and control. 

"Many people come from the acute care space where they have a department that helps you know that just focuses on infection for internal control or just focuses on education,” Smith said. “But then when they go to the independent, especially the independent ASC space, many they don't have that, and they have to do everything from staffing to checking in patients who now they're doing the infection prevention and control standard operating procedures and so on and so forth. So that was the inspiration to create this CE course for them. That way, they can have a reminder of what's going on and be able to have an assurance that they may be doing things correctly or that they need to change some things.”

To learn more about a perioperative nurse’s opinion, 

 asked Smith what are the most significant challenges that perioperative nurses face today and how her presentation addresses them.
“I think one of the biggest things we are seeing, and we will probably continue to see, is burnout and that high turnover. When we see that high turnover, that's when things slip through the cracks because it's like I just trained so and so, and now I got to train someone else coming in, or I just did this, and now we're short-staffed by 3 nurses because a bug went through."
Smith explains that they must cover much more than IPC. "So not just IPC, how we are handling patients, how we're getting them through procedures, how we're discharging them, and so on and so forth. So I will elaborate rate within this presentation that yes, these are common mistakes, but this is how we fix them.”



In the dynamic world of infection prevention and control (IPC), Erica Smith knows perioperative nursing and infection prevention. With a passion for supporting surgery centers and independent ASCs, her upcoming presentation dives deep into the common mistakes and challenges faced in IPC practices. 

AORN 2024 Presentation: A Talk With the Presenter of "Infection Prevention in the ASC Environment of Care"

Cheron Rojo, BS, FCS, CHL, CIS, CER, CFER, CRCST,  insulated medical devices 

Uncovering the Hidden Dangers: A Comprehensive Study on Insulated Medical Devices from 2021 to 2022

Cheron Rojo, BS, FCS, CHL, CIS, CER, CFER, CRCST, Senior Clinical Education Specialist for Healthmark Industries, delves into the realm of insulated medical devices, a topic often overshadowed by the spotlight on laparoscopic tools. These seemingly innocuous instruments have been linked to patient burns and staff-related fires, creating a significant but often unspoken issue. By discussing his study with 

, he wants to bring awareness to this rarely-covered issue.

“This presentation is about my 2021 to 2022. It's a [year-long] study that was more robust, and my first study was in 2019, which stemmed from my daughter getting ill and ending up having a lot of Abby in 2020. the 2019 study was around 8 months because of COVID-19. I knew later I wanted to do something more robust, which is what this presentation is about. So that's kind of it in a nutshell; it's just a bigger study. The study itself is more about insulated devices. It's not about just laparoscopic that a lot of individuals focus on. It's about insulated bipolar, forceps, cables, and cords that are insulated, all these items that have been linked to burns to patients internally or externally. The staff had fires and burnings, from the surgeons to even the scrub techs. So, to me, it's a very, very big issue. And the study does it justice, meaning it makes people aware that the problem still exists. It's just a lot of individuals or facilities don't talk about it because they settle outside of court.”

 hopes his audience will learn from his presentation. “I don't want to scare them. But at the same time, I 

 to scare them. The message I want them to take is being able to go back to their country and start their facility because a lot of these individuals were from one facility or their health care system in performing the auditing tool that I'm ending with. I'm not just going in and showing them numbers. I'm not just going to scare them with pictures, obviously a lot of pictures. But I'm giving them a list to be able to go back and say, look, do you have this? Do you have this? And if you have this, is your staff using it correctly? Do they even know how to identify this specific damage? I show them different damages and tell them what it is, where it's located, and why it's possibly happening. So, it's an auditing tool that I want to leave them with.”

(Quotations have been edited for clarity. Watch the video above for the full interview)

This interview with Cheron Rojo, BS, FCS, CHL, CIS, CER, CFER, CRCST, delves into a robust year-long study, starting in 2021, investigating the often-overlooked risks associated with insulated medical devices impacting both patients and medical staff.

Uncovering the Hidden Dangers: A Comprehensive Study on Insulated Medical Devices From 2021 to 2022

Overcoming challenges to eye device reprocessing

Issues related to the cleaning, disinfection, and sterilization of eye devices in health care settings are not a topic that arises often. However, in a 

, the process and quality improvement activity discussed in this study were designed to address that lack. By adhering to the manufacturer's instructions and established best practices, the study aimed to create a robust and sustainable system to enhance patient safety during eye-related medical procedures.

To learn more about the study, Katharine Hoffman, MPH, CIC, LSSGB, infection prevention community health program manager, JPS Health Network, Fort Worth, Texas, and lead investigator, and Lisa Waldowski, DNP, RN, CIC, executive director of infection prevention and control, Wellstar Health System Atlanta, Georgia, also on this study, spoke with 

“The intent of this [study] was to take a significant deep dive, look at any area of opportunity across the network,” Hoffman told ICT. “Much of this was identified from a mock survey and from previous awareness, with The Joint Commission highlighting concerns around ophthalmic and optometric devices, and putting that all together, and starting. Then, with infection prevention, we're very much investigators. You have to do that shoe leather work, as [Waldowski] likes to call it, and get in there, start asking questions, get to know the staff look for any other concerns, and see what you can find. And with each finding, follow it through and try and close the loop.”

 conducted with Hoffman and Waldowski in 2022. In this first segment of this interview, the investigators discuss the study spanning over 3 years and the challenges they faced related to unclear device instructions and the need for persistent communication with international manufacturers. The importance of addressing these issues in outpatient and inpatient settings became evident, highlighting the significance of scrutinizing AI device processing and promoting best practices.

The investigators emphasized the complexities of obtaining, understanding, and implementing device instructions. This endeavor was more intricate than expected, involving detailed device-specific instructions and necessitating clear communication with frontline staff to drive change.

The study used the Lean 6 Sigma methodology to conduct a thorough evaluation of the processing of noncritical, semicritical, and critical devices. The assessment followed a hierarchical approach, considering relevant laws, regulations, manufacturer guidelines, evidence-based recommendations, consensus documents, facility risk assessments, and established policies and procedures.

The efforts of Hoffman, Waldowski, and their team, in conjunction with the multidisciplinary approach, focused on the application of instructions for use and evidence-based practices, promoting sustainability and furthering the prevention of health care-associated infections and patient harm.

A recent American Journal of Infection Control study, led by Katharine Hoffman, MPH, CIC, LSSGB, and Lisa Waldowski, DNP, RN, CIC, applies Lean Six Sigma to improve eye device reprocessing. The research highlights the challenges, emphasizes adherence to manufacturer instructions, and promotes best practices for patient safety.

Overcoming Challenges to Eye Device Reprocessing: A 3-Year Study 

Reaching for zero infections in orthopedic operating rooms led one facility to find a visible-light continuous environmental disinfection system. Recently, to find out how the system works and the results of the study that examined the system, 

 spoke with Cliff Yahnke, PhD, chief scientist and head of clinical affairs for Indigo-Clean and Kenall Manufacturing; and Lynnelle Murrell, RN, BSN, CIC, director, infection prevention and control, Maury Regional Medical Center.

“Indigo-Clean, a continuous environmental disinfection technology, uses visible light to safely and continuously kill harmful viruses and bacteria within the environment while also providing ambient illumination within the space,” states the 

. “Indigo-Clean is a technology integrated into light fixtures, which install easily into the ceiling of any hospital room, classroom, or office space to bolster your current cleaning protocols.”

Murrell explained, “With our patient population and orthopedic surgeries, we have found that you] have to keep doing the [infection prevention] bundle; you can't just let one part of what prevents infection. While the lights are there, they're constant. And I'll go on a little rabbit trail to say we've even checked in their efficacy a couple of times, to make sure that they are still those in the room as they should….But you have to keep going back as far as the human element and mak[e] sure that we are doing all the basic things [like] we are wearing our surgical attire.”

Yahnke added, “Where Lynette and I ended up [in] the first phase of our research, we've started to look at other questions that we can answer in the operating room, specifically how, or what the benefit of the lights might be a real-time intraoperatively while the patient is on the table. And so we've done a pilot study looking at, essentially, the transmission of organisms within the room, from when the room is prepped to when the patient is brought in and prepared for anesthesia. And we specifically use a technique called wholesale genomic analysis to fingerprint various strains of organisms. And this was a pilot study that was done at the University of Iowa; it was published by AORN [Association of periOperative Registered Nurses Conference] in 2020. We have a full-blown randomized study going on at a major school right now; hopefully, that'll be ready to publish here in the very near future. But the idea is that it highlights the benefits of this unique technology, which is that it can be used while people are in the room. And you know, that also highlights one of the common misconceptions of the technology is that people apply standard metrics that they use for ultraviolet light, for example, which is, you know, kind of log kill or the amount of kill in a very short period of time. Whereas we asked the more medically relevant questions, such as reduction of post-operative infection and intraoperative transmission. And we find that those questions resonate with medical professionals because that's how they view things. People realize there are organisms contaminated throughout the hospital. And that, of course, reducing organisms is a good thing. But it doesn't necessarily answer the medical question: does this benefit the patient in any way? And that's what we're trying to focus on with our research.” 

Yahnke and Murrell also discussed the system’s effect against SARS-CoV-2. “The other piece of research, which is incredibly relevant to our time here, is effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 and other enveloped viruses, and historically visible light was just considered effective against viruses,” Yahnke said. “But we answered that question in a way that no one had before. It's ineffective against non-enveloped viruses, such as norovirus. Still, it turns out that enveloped viruses, such as SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A, have this fatty lipid layer surrounding the inner contents of the virus. And that fatty lipid layer has the hydrocarbons required to absorb the visible light to create the oxidative reaction, which then can disassociate the organism. I traveled in the middle of this entire pandemic in the fall of 2020, to Mount Sinai in New York, where we did this research with Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, PhD, [Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Director of the 

Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute

 of Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York] who is world-renowned in this subject. And the results were revolutionary for our field. It was published in 

. It gives you some indication as to the importance and significance of the results. And again, it shows the fact that this visible light, even in very low dose situations, can be very effective against these types of viruses.”

Visible-light continuous environmental disinfection system reduces microbial contamination and surgical site infections, as noted in an AJIC study. Experts explain the study and the technology.


Visible-Light Continuous Environmental Disinfection System Reduces Pathogens

Adverse Events toolkits by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General are designed to aid health care professionals and decision-makers in preventing harm to patients in hospitals, nursing homes, and other inpatient settings. Lee Adler, DO, infectious disease specialist, AdventHealth System; and Amy Ashcraft, MPA, a deputy regional inspector general with the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) spoke with 

)about the Adverse Events Toolkits recently published by the OIG.

Ashcraft provides insight into the inspiration behind the creation of the toolkits. “As an oversight agency for the Department of Health and Human Services, we have responsibilities for both Medicare and Medicaid programs, and ensuring that patients are receiving safe care and effective care is a huge priority for the OIG. We're invested in this topic area; we've been doing work on patient safety for over 15 years and have produced almost 20 reports on the topic. And when we talk about adverse events, I want to clarify…that we are talking about all causes of harm, we don't focus on a specific list. And we include both preventable and nonpreventable events that may be important to some of your viewers.”

Ashcraft continued, “As we've been doing this work, we found that patient harm is commonplace in every inpatient setting. And the rates range from 13 to 46%, depending on the setting that you look at. I wanted to tell you about our most recent report, which we released in May 2022. It was the seventh medical record review looking at a national incidence rate of patient harm. And we found that about a quarter (1 in 4) of Medicare patients experience harm during hospital stays, and almost half of those were preventable.”

 viewers that infections “were the smallest category of types of events that we've looked at and comprise about 11% of the adverse events. The most common ones were respiratory infections, surgical site infections, and thrush. And in terms of why it's important, it's imperative that hospitals and other health care settings monitor their rates of adverse events and patient harm. And we released these toolkits because we wanted to share what we've learned conducting this work so that others can build upon it.”

The toolkits should not be considered perpetual. “It's important for those who read the document to understand that [the toolkits were created and written at a certain] point in time because evidence and practices change and what was not preventable,” Adler said. “In the past, for instance, central line infections [were considered nonpreventable but] are now considered preventable. Also, sepsis says another indication of where they were using lots of fluid years ago in as part of the best practices, and now we are very careful and how much fluid we give a patient not to overload them. If anybody's going to use this toolkit, they need to look at the latest guidance, whether it's the CDC guides, NHSN, or the Infectious Disease Society. And it's important that this is a document and appointed time that each time it's used [the information] needs to be updated.”

The toolkits were created with the help of many experts from many different fields of study to get the best practices. Ashcraft explains, “These [toolkits] represent numerous hours of research and case-specific conversations. It's a living document. And for each study, we would revisit the basic guidance document and add to it considering anything that has changed and the recommended practices over the intervening years or that are specific to a set setting that we're looking at. And get input from our panel of physicians; we had 6 high-level physicians with a range of specializations, including infectious disease, cardiology, surgery, neurology, and orthopedics. I could go on, but we tried to cover a wide range of specializations. And whenever we didn't have the specialization that we needed, Dr. Adler would go out and find someone that would help us to make sure we got the most accurate information for people working in that field. And then, in addition to that, as we were manually reviewing cases, we would come together weekly and talk about those cases.”

Ashcraft emphasized that these toolkits are only tools. “We're not anticipating that people are going to use this as a cookie-cutter approach. And that's why we made it what we termed a “pick-and-choose” resource. You can take the parts that are useful to your organization and apply them and modify them to what is most appropriate.”

(These quotes have been lightly edited for clarity. To hear the entire discussion, click the video above.)

As an oversight agency for the Department of Health and Human Services, the Office of Inspector General is responsible for ensuring the safety and effectiveness of Medicare and Medicaid programs, with a huge priority being patient care. These toolkits provide additional guidance on how to avoid patient injury. 


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