Jan Dyer

Because of mask-wearing and social distancing, numbers of influenza cases have been down the last 2 years. However, experts say numbers this year could go back up to numbers in prior years. The public and health care workers alike need a nudge to get vaccinated.

Health care workers' adherence to guidelines and overall job satisfaction are influenced by the level of support they feel they receive from their management team.

How do you protect against waterborne infections when water itself is nearly ubiquitous?

Outpatient settings are not like inpatient settings. They have unique requirements and circumstances, including those related to infection prevention and control.

The electrostatic sprayer method kills nearly 100% of pathogens. It also kills the COVID-19 virus. But is that overkill?

One of the most disturbing features of C auris is that, in its relatively short life, it has rapidly developed resistance to the few available treatment options.

Preliminary data for the last quarter of 2020 revealed a jump of 34% in methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) compared with the same quarter in 2019. Several states had much higher increases. In Arizona, for instance, rates leapt 80%; in New Jersey, that figure was 99%.

C. diff infection is an old enemy and health care professionals have gathered an armamentarium of weapons against it, but it can be relentless.

One junior at New Jersey’s Rutgers University, the first to mandate COVID-19 vaccination, said, “I’m not antivax, I’m anti-mandate. My education should not be restricted based on my personal decision to receive the COVID-19 vaccination.”

Some fear that hospitals will become “Robots R Us” environments, but that is unlikely. Chatbots, although useful, are poor stand-ins for in-depth, in-person conversation with a health care provider. And if COVID-19 did anything, it put a million faces to the tragedy of what it’s like to die without human contact.

When outbreaks have been reported in hospitals that are using universal masking, unmasked exposure to other health care workers is often the cause. Transmissions have been traced to break rooms and cafeterias.

Even with effective screening, treatment, and education, STIs can be like movie villains who just won’t die, who change form, and who keep coming back to wreak havoc. They’re relentless, but so is science.

This may not be the best time to ask, “What’s next?” But…what’s next? What pathogen(s) not called COVID-19 should we be most concerned about? And where will it (they) be coming from?

Hand hygiene is always important, but during this pandemic it’s crucial to preventing transmission. Now technology is making it possible for hospitals not only to monitor compliance, but also potential viral exposure.

What’s the matter with Kansas? Well, for one thing, counties could choose whether to follow state health department guidelines on masking. COVID-19 case-count differences between counties that did and those that didn’t is striking.

Candida auris is difficult to identify with standard laboratory methods. It can be misidentified in labs without specific technology, which can lead to mismanagement.

Cedric Steiner: “We had to address the ability to say good-bye to loved ones. A big guy, with tears in his eyes. He was so thankful that they had a place to go for their mother, because at the hospital they couldn’t see her. He wanted to give me a bear hug, but we did the ‘elbow thing’ instead.”

Much of the care for the spread-out and isolated patient population is home care. The hospital has a 3-person HIV team and about 6 public health nurses who visit patients in their homes. They all speak Navajo. (COVID-19 is Diko Ntsaaígíí-Náhást’éíts’áadah.)

As the pandemic seems not to abate, patients will start to present to the hospital after delaying crucial primary and preventive care visits, meaning sicker non–COVID-19 infected patients, with the potential for increased CLABSI and CAUTI rates.

A portable anteroom can be used as an extra layer of protection between the isolation space and the rest of the hospital. A positively pressured anteroom, for instance, lets staff don PPE in a protected environment.  

The Infectious Diseases Society of America updated its position statement to educate its membership on the use of telemedicine and telehealth technologies to provide “evidence-based, cost-effective, subspecialty care.”

One hospital has asked workers to consider shaving their beards.