Categories: Healthcare-associated infections
August 13th, 2012 12:08 pm ET -
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Ann Marie Pettis, RN, BSN, CIC
Guest Author – Ann Marie Pettis, RN, BSN, CIC
Director of Infection Prevention, University of Rochester Medical Center,
Rochester, New York
Chair, APIC Communications Committee
I always wanted to be a nurse. You could say it was in my DNA because my grandmother and grandfather were both registered nurses, and my father was a navy corpsman in World War II. Being an “infection prevention nurse,” however, was not even on my radar. In fact, microbiology was one of my least favorite courses in nursing school, and I had no particular interest in germs.
Early in my nursing career, as a result of several Staph aureus outbreaks in the newborn nursery, I developed a close working relationship with the infection preventionist (IP) assigned to our unit. That relationship led to my recruitment to fill a vacancy in the infection control department. Ready for a change, and flattered by the IP’s confidence in me, I made the decision to “give it a try.”
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Categories: Healthcare-associated infections
August 1st, 2012 12:00 pm ET -
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Jeannie P. Cimiotti, DNSc, RN
Author – Jeannie P. Cimiotti, DNSc, RN
Executive Director, NJ Collaborating Center for Nursing;
Associate Professor, Rutgers University College of Nursing
Job-related burnout has been well-documented among individuals who provide care to others. The etiology of burnout points to chronic stress that results not only from the close interaction with people, but with the organizational climate in which people work. One organizational area that has been extensively identified as a contributing factor to this complex syndrome is workload.
Historically, nurses provide care under less than desirable circumstances. Often overworked and under appreciated, nurses are the only professionals who are in constant contact with patients, and they deal with life and death issues on a daily basis. It’s not surprising then that our survey of nurses in Pennsylvania showed that more than a third reported high levels of emotional exhaustion, a key component of burnout syndrome. We must ask ourselves, what happens when nurses suffer from high emotional exhaustion? It’s simple – they begin to feel like they lack control. Then, they psychologically and cognitively detach from the care environment. The result is less than optimal nursing care.
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Categories: Healthcare-associated infections, Injection Safety, Outpatient Care
July 16th, 2012 11:35 am ET -
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Michael Bell, MD
Author: Michael Bell, MD,
Associate Director for Infection Control at CDC′s Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion.
CDC released a report today detailing two outbreaks that occurred when healthcare providers failed to follow basic injection safety elements of Standard Precautions. These breaches resulted in life-threatening – yet completely preventable – infections in a number of patients receiving injections for pain relief. How does this happen in today’s advanced medical settings?
In both outbreaks, healthcare providers were splitting single-dose/single-use medication vials meant for one patient into new doses for multiple patients. There was a lack of awareness that this practice puts patients at risk of infection. Because injections were prepared with new needles and syringes and, in one of the clinics, in a separate “clean” medication preparation room, providers thought they were being safe. However, these preservative-free medications are not safe for multi-patient use. Ultimately, ten patients in these two clinics required hospitalization for treatment of mediastinitis, bacterial meningitis, epidural abscess, septic arthritis, bursitis, and sepsis – all severe infections caused by either Staphylococcus aureus (Staph) or its drug-resistant form MRSA.
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Categories: Healthcare-associated infections, Injection Safety, State HAI Prevention
June 1st, 2012 11:02 am ET -
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Peter Graves MD
Guest Author – Peter Graves, MD
Chairman, Department of Emergency Medicine
Academic Faculty, Kent Hospital Emergency Medicine Residency Program
Kent Hospital
Warwick, RI
One of the great “truisms” of Life is that we often don’t know—what we don’t know. In other words, we can’t imagine the scope of a problem if we are under the assumption that it doesn’t even exist.
No provider goes to the hospital or office with the intent of harming patients. So I was shocked to learn that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tracked over 40 outbreaks of infectious disease caused by unsafe injection practices including hepatitis B (HBV), hepatitis C (HCV) and bacterial infections in the past 10 years in the United States. It is fundamentally unacceptable that these outbreaks were because healthcare providers failed to follow Standard Precautions when preparing an injection. Those lapses in basic infection control include reusing needles and syringes from patient to patient or misusing single-dose and multi-dose vials. This boggles the minds of many practitioners who may feel they are following correct procedures—when in fact they might not be doing so at all.
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Categories: Healthcare-associated infections, Injection Safety, Outpatient Care
May 31st, 2012 9:40 am ET -
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One & Only Campaign
Author – Joseph Perz, DrPH, MA
Prevention Team Leader for the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
You might be thinking, “Is a knowledge refresher on injection safety really needed? Providers all know how to give safe injections!” Sadly, this is not the case. We at CDC have seen outbreak after outbreak related to providers not following safe injection practice standards as outlined in CDC guidelines. We also see patient notifications that inform patients that they “may have been exposed – please be tested.” Failures in basic patient protections that we see include the reuse of syringes or needles; the reuse of single-dose/single-use vials; and mishandling of multi-dose/multi-use vials. With every outbreak or patient notification event that has occurred over the past 10 years, we have wondered how many other infections and exposures are slipping by, unnoticed.
The CDC and the Safe Injection Practices Coalition have released a safe injection toolkit geared specifically for busy medical practices. This free toolkit features a Power Point presentation with recorded audio, convenient for use during staff meetings, in-services, and other educational seminars. Other pieces include a no-cost Medscape CME activity, a safe injection practices training video, and a number of eye-catching posters to remind staff about the basics of injection safety.
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