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 Matthew Pullen, MD.
Introducing the Infection Control Today's (ICT's) Editorial Board members—a diverse group of professionals dedicated to advancing infection prevention and control practices. This series highlights each member's unique expertise and contributions to the field.
From groundbreaking research to innovative strategies, these experts are at the forefront of enhancing health care safety. Join us as we learn their insights, experiences, and visions for the future, providing valuable knowledge and inspiration to elevate infection control protocols.
This installment is from Matthew Pullen, MD.
Meet Matthew Pullen, MD.
I am Dr Matthew Pullen at the University of Minnesota. I am an infectious disease physician and assistant professor of infectious diseases and international medicine. I've been asked to talk about my journey into health care and infection prevention and the trends I want to see in infection prevention in ICT. So, as far as getting into medicine, [it is] something I always wanted to do, even when I was a little kid. My parents always had National Geographics around our house. I remember that, in kindergarten, there was an early 3D rendering of a bacteriophage on the cover. And I drew that in my journal in kindergarten and loved it. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. I just always loved anything about viruses and bacteria.
Going into later years, in high school, I [was] still interested in it, volunteered in clinics and hospitals when I could, [then] continued doing that in college. Then [I] got into genetic research at college, under the mentorship of Dr Margaret Kovac, who was just a wonderful geneticist at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga.
From there, I interned as an intern geneticist with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at the FBI Academy. I stayed on there for a bit, doing genetics work in the Counterterrorism Support and Forensic Research Unit. Most of my work was related to mitochondrial DNA using technologies that, at the time, were ahead of the market, so things that weren't available to anyone else that today—it was long enough ago—that today they would be massively outdated and slow and useless, but in 2006 they were cutting-edge.
His professional portfolio page is www.mfpullenmd.com
The TB meningitis app info is:
Publication:https://www.ajtmh.org/view/journals/tpmd/aop/article-10.4269-ajtmh.23-0789/article-10.4269-ajtmh.23-0789.xml
Web app: https://tbmcalc.github.io/tbmcalc/
iOS store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tb-meningitis-risk-calculator/id6572282795
Google Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mfpullenmd.tbmcalc&pli=1
After that, I was still trying to decide if I wanted to do research or clinical medicine. I decided my heart was still in clinical medicine, so I applied to medical school. While doing that, I took a research position at Vanderbilt University, working in a lab that specialized in the genetics of the circadian rhythm. So, I kept one foot in the genetics world.
It took 2 cycles, but [I] got into medical school at the University of Tennessee in Memphis. I had a great education there, stayed there for my internal medicine residency, and got a phenomenal clinical education. Then, after that, it was time to apply for a fellowship in infectious diseases. I wanted to learn some aspects of international health during my fellowship training, and Minnesota has a very strong track record for that. They have a core research group that is doing a lot of work in Uganda.
During residency, I got to work in Kenya, right next door, so I was a little familiar with the region. So, I came here and started working with David Boulware, [MD, MPH, professor of medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and International Medicine] on cryptococcal meningitis and tuberculosis research and got to spend a little bit of time in Uganda my first year of fellowship. Then, through his mentorship, he got a Fogarty fellowship to the National Institutes of Health and spent a full year living in Uganda researching drug-resistant [tuberculosis]. While there, I got to work a little with Doctors Without Borders. They have an isolation unit in the town that I lived in, so I got to see the inner workings of that.
When I returned to Minnesota, we opened what is now our hospital's regional special pathogens unit. So, I asked to join that team, and I was the first fellow who was crazy enough to decide to join that team. Now, we make it a part of the fellowship program where they can be exposed to it. But we got to do training on infection control for Ebola virus, Lassa, and all kinds of high-complication pathogens that, thankfully, we have not seen here yet. I'm still a member of that team.
Then, ICT asked me to join the Editorial Advisory Board. I have contributed a few pieces and quotes here and there.
As far as trends that I see in infection prevention, one trend that I really like is I think we are taking a much more pragmatic and practical approach to infection prevention. Or most of my medical education, everything has been ramped up to a 10 with infection prevention. You know, every MRSA case is gowns and gloves. Everything is maximum materials being used, and in the last few years, more and more research has come out that's shown maybe we're a little overboard with that. There are questions of whether the MRSA we're seeing is community-acquired or hospital-acquired; it may be where our resources are better spent in the community or on other prevention methods. So, I think that's good. I think being open to changing our way of thinking will help save costs in health care and make these resources more available when needed.
Regarding topics I would like to see in ICT for the rest of the year, I think that falls into 2 buckets: practical things that we should cover and then pet interests that I think are interesting but are probably not very practical. As far as practical things, I think you like the trends getting into some of the more cutting-edge research on practicality versus utility and efficacy in infection control emerging pathogens as more comes out about Candida auris, and resistant pseudomonas, and things like that. Those are things that day-to-day will be helpful from the less practical but personally interesting side of things would be little pieces on infection control and bioterrorism and biodefense agents, those things that we don't think about often because they're not huge day-to-day concerns. Still, if you're on call when smallpox walks into your ER, you should know how to handle that.
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