Videos

Linda Spaulding: “Infection preventionists, put your tennis shoes on because over the next two months, we’re predicting to see a huge increase.... We have all the holidays coming up. You’re going to have cases from those. Hospitals have to be prepared.”

Ashish Diwanji: “The personal protective equipment made and sold in the US has to abide by the standards set up by NIOSH …. The PPE made and sold from China do adhere to the Chinese standards, but their standards are different than ours.”

Kevin Kavanagh, MD: “Infection preventionists will need to make sure that they still have access to adequate PPE, even if the vaccine comes out [and they] really need to look at the experimental group that was used for the EUA.”

Michael Bell, MD: “The challenge that infection control professionals face has grown tremendously. We’re asking these individuals to not only be experts, but also to take responsibility for such a wide range of activities ... and finding ways to help them accomplish what they’re doing across the whole population of healthcare personnel is the rationale behind Project Firstline.”

Sharon Ward-Fore, MS, MT(ASCP), CIC: “I’m hoping that healthcare facilities will find the value in their infection preventionists and understand how important a role they play as far as training on PPE and disinfectants, and in hand hygiene, being kind of a boots on the ground people on the floor to see things firsthand.”

Franklin Dexter, MD: “I would recommend to those people working in different surgical suites to recognize that within an operating room, you shouldn’t assume that stepping away from the patient would put you in reduce risk. You should think about what the airflow is in the operating room.”

Maya Gossman, RN: “Our infection preventionist has trained me in the past with the PPE use and the infection prevention measures. And so, I’m passing that on—the knowledge that she’s given me—I’m passing that on at this point to my vascular nurse trainees, my orientees.”

Monica Gandhi MD, MPH: “We will get to the end of this [COVID-19]. We will get to a combination of vaccine and natural infection, enough people getting herd immunity that this will stop. This will stop and we will get back to normal.”

Mary Jean Ricci MSN, RNBC: “In most facilities, the infection preventionist is the person doing contact tracing, is assisting the students should there be an exposure, is assisting with providing education on site or real-time education with the students should they see the students take off their PPE.”

Christopher Blank, CIC, MPH, an infection preventionist with BJC Healthcare, sits down with Infection Control Today® to discuss the benefits of making employment for healthcare workers contingent on getting the flu vaccination.

Kevin Kavanagh, MD: “Many of the infection preventionists over the last six months now have more experience than many of the policymakers up in D.C., because they’ve lived it firsthand. And they’ve seen how COVID-19 can spread. And they’re starting to develop a good idea of how to stop it.”

Sarah Smathers, MPH, CIC, FAPIC: “I think that hospital administrators are concerned about how they’re going to recruit in a field that is expecting a lot of retirees: 40% of infection professionists are expected to retire in the next five to 10 years.”

Bilal Naseer, MD: “Nurses who are kind of at a point where they cannot do bedside care, they should consider infection prevention. We need more infection preventionists.”

Cedric Steiner, MBA: “When we talk about infection control, and not just one room, but pieces of the facility, we’re definitely on the right track. And I think we need to start thinking about the building as like a living, breathing kind of thing.”

Sean Norman, MS, PhD: “We know from the scientific literature that asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals both shed the virus through fecal material, which then works its way into the sewer system, and it can be captured as part of our sample.”

Ernest Grant, PhD: “Until we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, it’s very crucial that we look out for one another and make sure we address our mental health and emotional needs.”

Sylvia Garcia-Houchins, MBA, RN, CIC: “I think initially, everybody said: ‘Oh, my gosh, we have a pandemic happening.’ It’s sort of a dead stop everywhere. And we’ve got to get ready. We’ve got to be prepared…. In many organizations at that point, the infection preventionist was really put into a position: Put my resources here? Put my resources there? I need to get a plan.”

Brent James, MD: “If you had an inpatient who developed an inpatient infection, it was like he got a console from ID in about three or four seconds. You just called up the program. You had to tell it the sites of infection you’re interested in, but then it did an epidemiologic evaluation of that patient.”

Kevin Kavanagh, MD: “I think you’ll find that infection preventionists in this type of climate are just not healthcare employed personnel. They need to be everywhere. They need to be in business. They need to be in schools. And, of course, they need to be in our healthcare system. But it is crucial to be in schools…”

Jonathan Iralu, MD: “We’ve dealt with small outbreaks, not a pandemic, but we were, in a sense, prepped to deal with the pandemic because we have had experience working with outbreaks…. We were used to collaborating with the state and the tribe on these other conditions. For COVID-19, we didn’t have to reinvent the wheel….”

Jason Tetro: “There are going to be COVID-19 waves every year. What we hope is that that vaccine is going to be able to help us to be able to have that protection whenever those waves are hitting us.”

J. Hudson Garrett Jr., PhD, MSN, MPH: “I think the role of the infection preventionist has always been of the most critical importance. Every time we have an outbreak or, now, a pandemic, it highlights that further.”

Melinda Benedict, MS, CIC, CFER: “I think for infection preventionists: If you’re not already involved in your endoscopy department or you haven’t been invited in, see if you can get in and just continue to check it out and see what’s going on, especially if the reprocessing and cleaning of the scope is actually done within that clinic.”

Anthony Harris, MD, MBA, MPH: “Really now it’s all about testing. How do we test? What scale do we test with? And, you know, what are the steps toward getting that access to the testing levels that we need necessary to mitigate risk?”

Rebecca Leach, RN, BSN, MPH, CIC: “I’m a very strong vaccine proponent. I do believe in them, and I think they should be mandatory if you’re working in healthcare.”

Infection preventionists and their skills will be in high demand in coming years in non-healthcare settings.

Fibi Attia, MD, the infection prevention coordinator at Penn State Milton S. Hersey Medical Center, says that the main challenge for infection preventionists in the COVID-19 pandemic is not knowing who might be carrying the disease.

Ann Marie Pettis, RN, BSN, CIC, FAPIC: “If indeed flu comes at the same time a second wave of COVID comes, that’s going to be difficult-unbelievably difficult because the symptoms obviously are somewhat similar. We’ll be trying to rule both of those things out. It will create more of a risk for a surge, and it will put more taxing on our PPE supplies.”

Sharon Ward-Fore, MS, MT(ASCP), CIC: “It is a collaboration, and I think the most successful environmental services department has an infection preventionist who really enjoys working with EVS.”

Sharon Ward-Fore, MS, MT(ASCP), CIC: “It is a collaboration, and I think the most successful environmental services department has an infection preventionist who really enjoys working with EVS.”