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In a likely prelude to a battle royal over mandating a swine flu vaccine, the New York State Health Department overrode nursing union protests recently in enacting an emergency regulation requiring seasonal flu shots for frontline health care workers.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is expected to issue a ruling by Oct. 1 on whether health care workers should wear surgical masks or N95 respirators when treating patients infected with H1N1 influenza A.
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Pregnant women appear to be particularly vulnerable to H1N1 influenza A virus and will be the top priority to receive a vaccine expected to be available this fall against the pandemic strain, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) recently recommended.
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(Editor's note: Carol LaChance, RN, infection preventionist at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, ME, has been in the field three years. With a background of 24 years in nursing, she has found the switch to an IP position difficult but empowering. We recently asked her five key questions.)
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With recession-driven budget cuts being only the latest example, the field of hospital epidemiology and infection prevention has faced numerous threats and ominous predictions of its impending doom.
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The Joint Commission is calling on health care administrators to take the lead in preventing infections with multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs), reminding them that current patient safety goals require CEOs to take responsibility for implementing programs to prevent these deadly and costly outcomes.
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The Joint Commission takes on the controversial issue of decolonization of patients carrying multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) in a new report aimed at health care CEOs.
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National health care reform must include a quality component including preventing health care-associated infections if it is to become an effective and affordable reality, Mark R. Chassin, MD, president of The Joint Commission, notes in a commentary posted on the Joint Commission web site (http://www.jointcommission.org).
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Based upon an increased incidence of heart failure with alpha 1-adrenergic antagonists treatment of hypertension, there has been concern about using alpha blockers for benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH) in patients with heart failure, yet these drugs are highly efficacious for this common condition.
