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With more hospitals in recent years considering mandatory seasonal flu immunizations for health care workers, the rise and highly anticipated seasonal resurgence of H1N1 influenza A raises a compelling question: Will the first pandemic in 41 years add momentum to increasing calls to make flu immunization a condition of health care employment?
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Timsit et al conducted a 2x2 randomized, controlled trial comparing chlorhexidine-impregnated sponges in the dressing of vascular catheters with control dressings.
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In reviewing the risk of seasonal influenza and the controversial question of health care worker immunization, Thomas Talbot, MD, MPH, paused on a mysterious case study an 'N of 1," if you will, that suggests patients come into hospitals and die of influenza contracted during treatment.
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Infection preventionists and their employee health colleagues undertaking a mandated program to immunize health care workers against flu invariably will run into four groups of people:
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Some infection preventionists have raised concerns about the unintended consequences of contact isolation in hospitals, which are often tied to active screening cultures to detect particular pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus(MRSA).
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State laws passed in the name of patient safety may straddle infection prevention programs with mandates that ultimately are counterproductive, an infection preventionist warned recently in Fort Lauderdale, FL, at the annual conference of the Association for Prevention of Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).
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Ah, the good old days when infections were classified as "nosocomial" (hospital-acquired) or not. There wasn't anything else but "we didn't do this thing" or "yes, this is our infection because we gave this to this person at our hospital."
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With the move to "targeting zero" infections and abandoning benchmark ranges comes a new role for the infection preventionists: agent of change.
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One of the most significant events in a person's life one often intertwined with his or her philosophies, values, and spiritual beliefs is the process of dying and death.
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In light of the ever-increasing diversity in patient populations, The Joint Commission (TJC) is proposing revised and additional standards to address communication, cultural competence, and patient-centered care in hospital settings.
