-
Norovirus is the organism most likely to trigger a shutdown of units in your hospital. And according to a recent survey of infection preventionists, it is responsible for more outbreaks than some deadlier organisms, such as Clostridium difficile and Staphylococcus aureus.
-
In yet another sign that infection control is becoming a national priority across a wide range of accreditors, regulators and state and federal agencies, the Joint Commission has created a new web portal to combine its full array of initiatives to prevent health care associated infections (HAIs).
-
In addition to calling for federal regulation requiring antimicrobial stewardship, a position paper by leading infectious disease groups recommended several other measures to preserve remaining antibiotic efficacy.
-
The question of gown use when entering patient isolation rooms is a recurrent one, so it is worth noting that this is the current thinking of the Joint Commission on the subject:
-
-
Researchers are finding a systemic problem involving the unnecessary use of IV fluoroquinolones in the acute care wards of hospitals. While the data came from 128 Veterans Administration (VA) hospitals, the research suggests this is a trend that all health care systems should address through antimicrobial stewardship programs.
-
Patients who received treatment for depression within a year were identified in a Japanese database of more than 323,000 patients. The investigators asked 2354 patients to complete a questionnaire on depression with a specific focus on patient-physician relationships.
-
One hospital's survey experience suggests Joint Commission surveyors will remain highly interested in infection control even if your health care associated infection (HAI) rate is low.
-
A historical cohort study from San Francisco General Hospital evaluated patients ≥18 years old that were hospitalized and received at least one dose of ceftriaxone. In a multivariable analysis, for every day a patient also received doxycycline the rate of Clostridium difficile infection was 27% lower than for those who did not receive doxycycline (hazard ratio, 0.73%; 95% confidence interval, 0.56-0.96).
-
Small subcortical brain infarcts, known as lacunar strokes, account for about 25% of all ischemic strokes.
