Prevention

During Sterile Processing Week, ICT® recognizes the job of sterile processing personnel as highly skilled labor in an uncomfortable work environment. It is also dangerous to those individuals who may pass through the room the sterile processing personnel are working in.

Winter is coming, which means influenza and COVID-19 rates are rising, but IPs have more issues like monkeypox and Ebola to contend with also.

Didier Pittet, MD, MS, CBE, a renowned epidemiologist, joins ICT® ahead of the upcoming Clean Hospitals Day Conference to discuss the biggest challenges that environmental hygiene personnel face.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending October 7.

COVID-19 has not been the only pathogen that has been spreading the last few years. Candida auris has taken a hold, not only in the United States but around the world. Here are the details and how environmental hygiene practices can protect patients in a health care setting.

Because of mask-wearing and social distancing, numbers of influenza cases have been down the last 2 years. However, experts say numbers this year could go back up to numbers in prior years. The public and health care workers alike need a nudge to get vaccinated.

The Association for Health Care Environment (AHE) annual conference brings together those individuals passionate about environmental hygiene. Rock Jensen, the AHE president for the board of advisors, describes to ICT® the goals of this year's conference.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending September 30.

A sepsis diagnosis is expensive and deadly, and early detection and treatment are key to saving lives. However, sepsis is not always easy to diagnose early, so a new advanced analytics surveillance tool can increase the chances of an improved outcome.

Many studies have been done on how to increase hand hygiene adherence. However, ICT® decided to go to the source and ask the health care workers themselves why they do not always follow hand hygiene.

Thorough cleaning and disinfection reduce the role fomites play in the spread of disease.

Environmental services teams (EVS) are crucial players in ensuring patient satisfaction and combating health care–associated infections, yet, too many EVS teams are invisible. They deserve recognition, and this article by environmental hygiene experts explains why and how to give appreciation effectively.

How infection preventionists communicate with those individuals with whom they interact is a tightrope of how to do it well and effectively. Read this article from readers' favorite, Heather Saunders, MPH, RN, CIC, to find out how to not fall off that tightrope in her second of 3 series on the 3'Cs of how to be a successful IP.

Viruses and other contaminants affect the air quality in health care, businesses, and homes. Listen to ICT®’s discussion about what should be done, and how one company is tackling the issue.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending September 23.

Ambassador Deborah Birx, MD, an American diplomat and infectious disease expert, once again joins Infection Control Today®, this time to talk about President Biden’s recent comment that the pandemic is over, and what can be done to mitigate the circumstances.

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

With the debate swirling around the efficacy and safety of UV-C technology, an individual needs which generation the product is. Infection Control Today® continues its ongoing special reporting on UV-C technology.

Despite studies that show UV-C is effective and safe, some individuals still refuse to believe it, based on experience with or studies based on first generation UV-C technology.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending September 16.

With COVID-19 beginning to surge, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Medical Center needed to create a response unit from what had been an inpatient nursing unit. A recent study explains how this conversion was effective and can stand as an example for other facilities.

With this declaration the United States is put on a list of countries circulating the viruses, specifically noted in Rockland County, NY, where the vaccination rate is low and surrounding areas.

Investigators have learned invaluable lessons from 2 and a half years of the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly on human immunity. Is natural infection better for long-term protection against COVID-19 or is vaccination? What does the data say?

Ambassador Deborah Birx, MD, believes not enough is doing to prepare for future pandemics. What are her recommendations? Find out in this final installment of her interview with Infection Control Today.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending September 9.

How much information should the public have about infectious diseases? Can the public handle the truth? If the correct information is not given out, will the public believe the medical leaders when another serious disease threatens the public’s health? Ambassador Deborah Birx, MD, continues her discussion with ICT.

CDC’s Medical Advisor for the Healthcare Safety Network, Raymund Dantes, MD, MPH, reviews sepsis and what infection preventionists, epidemiologists, and other health care workers need to know.

Long-term care facilities were once normally happier places, but COVID-19 changed the individuals working and living there. PPEs, testing, overwork, underpayment, and too many isolations have chased health care workers away and forced the facilities' population to plummet. Can anything be done?

The workshop included members of the public, academics, and representatives of the pharmaceutical industry to discuss development of new medicines for preventing HAIs and antibiotic resistance.

Prolonged catheter use is the number 1 risk factor for developing catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI). External urine collection devices are an alternative to indwelling catheters for managing urinary incontinence.