COVID-19

Infection preventionists (IPs) are stretched to the limit with both reporting and patient responsibilities with an unwillingness of facilities to prioritize infectious disease prevention in their operating budgets.

Decontaminated respirators should only be resorted to when unused devices are not available, but that happened a lot in the last few months.

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.”

Rebecca Leach, RN, BSN, MPH, CIC: “Infection preventionists had to work very closely with our supply chain and look at all of our options and really keep track of it. I also think working with lab more closely will be important in the future, to understand testing modalities, understanding our abilities to test and interpreting those tests.”

Matthew Pullen, MD: “After examining the data of our 821 participants, we did not find a significant difference in the risk of infection following exposure in those taking hydroxychloroquine and those taking placebo."

Sharon Ward-Fore: "Rather than reusing gowns, consider bundling patient care activities to conserve gowns. Donning a gown that has already been used can be tricky, and a source of contamination to the user."

Many healthcare facilities, not only LTCFs, have turned to online training for staff and then designate the employee as competent to do their job. Online training does not prove competency; it provides training.

Most likely the COVID death count of nursing homes will mount as more information comes to light, as only about 80% of the nation’s approximately 15,400 nursing homes have reported their data.

Infection prevention sustainability isn’t easy and everyone is exhausted, but now is the time that practice makes permanent.

The wearing of cloth masks doesn’t mean that employees should stop following social distancing guidelines. In fact, social distancing guidelines must be followed at all times.

Deborah Chung: “With the 40% of healthcare workers wanting better hand hygiene training pre-COVID, I can only assume that’s been exponentially surged.”

Kevin Kavangh, MD: “What worries me the most about reopening is that people going to say, ‘Oh, it’s over with’ and not do any sort of protection, whether it’s social distancing, wearing masks, not gathering in crowds. I really think that people will think, ‘Well, we got this beat.’”

Jason Tetro: “When healthcare leaders are meeting, I think that they’re going to listen to infection preventionists much more than they have in the past.”

Viruses like SARS-CoV-2 are some of the most vulnerable pathogens to the microbicidal agents in many detergents and cleaning solutions, including soaps for personal care and liquid hand washes. 

Small clusters of environmental transmission in gyms and other workout settings can tell us about potential risky environments in healthcare. Outpatient physical therapy for one.

Viral droplets from a sneeze can even travel 23 to 27 feet.

Katherine Perez, PharmD: “For patients with COVID-19, I think the jury’s still out as to how we should be using antibiotics in those patients and what the risk of a secondary bacterial infection truly is. And that type of information has not been made available, at least not in huge amounts at this time.”

In order to effectively achieve a safe healthcare environment where frequently used touch screen technology is both ubiquitous and mobile, education must be provided to highlight the appropriate products and practices for cleaning/disinfection and hand hygiene.

Jeffrey Rose: “I think the desire to break apart some of the functionality of the hospital and spread it out into other facilities-like oncology centers or ambulatory surgery centers-to reduce the large population at one building, is going to continue to grow. And in addition, if you design them correctly, you can use those facilities for surge capacity.”

While starting to perform elective surgeries, hospitals should also keep an eye COVID-19 in their communities and have the resources available to respond to a surge in COVID patients without having to resort to a crisis standard of care.

Both donning and doffing are carefully laid out, but it’s the doffing part of the procedure that might present the most challenge because it involves the discarding of some of the PPE in a manner that most limits the chance of self-contamination or contaminating someone else. 

Daniel F. Shay, Esq.: “COVID-19 is not the last infectious disease that we’re going to encounter…. I think that there are good reasons to use telemedicine to the extent that you can reduce the risk to healthcare practitioners, healthcare professionals, and also to other patients, and, frankly, the general populace.”

Yi Guo, PharmD: “I think one thing that we learned is to work closely with the infection control preventionists because when we discovered the patient has multidrug resistant bacteria, we want to make sure the appropriate isolation policy is in place.”

Start out with brief non-urgent telemedicine encounters; get the patients used to the process.