Guest Author, Tom Frieden, MD, MPH Director, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Last Saturday marked the third birthday of the Affordable Care Act. We at CDC are in the prevention business. So, in addition to the Act’s provisions to increase …
Guest Author – Dr. Currie Montefiore Medical Center, University Hospital and Academic Medical Center for the Albert Einstein College of Medicine Today I would like to discuss a highly successful patient safety intervention designed to reduce the prev…
Guest Authors – Michael Y. Lin, MD MPH Mary K. Hayden, MD For the Chicago Prevention Epicenters Program Increasingly, certain kinds of bacteria are causing serious infections that are difficult or impossible to cure because the bacteria are resistant…
Author – Arjun Srinivasan, MD CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion Today in CDC’s March Vital Signs, we report on what could be the beginning of the end of antibiotics. Our arsenal of existing antibiotics is being overpowered by lethal …
Author: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Injection safety is part of the minimum expectation for safe care anywhere healthcare is delivered; yet, CDC has had to investigate outbreak after outbreak of life-threatening infections caused by in…
Author – Matthew Wayne MD, CMD, Chief Medical Officer for CommuniCare Family of Companies, President of the American Medical Directors Association (AMDA) So, you’ve recently taken antibiotics and you’ve now developed a case of disturbing diarrhea…
Author – Nimalie Stone MD, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As you have read in the posts from our academic and clinical partners, much work needs to be done to impact the systems and behaviors dri…
Author – Sara Cosgrove, MD, MS, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Medical and scientific advances change the way we look at the world. Before penicillin was introduced in 1942, any infection could be a death sentence. Since then, we have been…
Authors: Diane Jacobsen MPH, CPHQ, Director, Institute for Healthcare Improvement Don Goldmann MD, Vice President, Institute for Healthcare Improvement Did you ever wonder why a practical change idea can be more than a simple challenge? For examp…
Author: Jan Patterson, MD, MS, FACP, FIDSA, FSHEA, CPE, FACHE President of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America Change is never easy and old habits are tough to break. Since preventable healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) affect one i…
One Case Sparks National Action Imagine… A patient goes to the doctor for a routine steroid injection. A couple weeks later, the patient feels sick – headache, fever and suddenly uncomfortable in bright light. Within days, the patient is admi…
Author – Katrina Crist, MBA CEO of APIC International Infection Prevention Week (IIPW), which takes place October 14-20, asks all of us to imagine a safer world through infection prevention. Imagine a healthcare setting where everyone performs approp…
Author – Brenda Helms, RN, BSN, MBA/HCM, CIC In healthcare, we often think of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) in terms of what they mean for our healthcare organization. As an infection preventionist, I know I did— until an HAI affected my …
Author: Priti Patel, MD MPH Medical Officer CDC’s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion While undergoing dialysis, patients have a lot on their minds. The last thing they need to worry about is getting a bloodstream infection in the process. In th…
Guest Author – Gemma Downham, MPH Infection Prevention Epidemiologist, AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center We have all heard about the heroic feat of Captain “Sully” Sullenberger when he performed an emergency landing of a passenger jet on the Hu…