Statistics reveal that one of every twenty hospital patients will contract some form of healthcare-associated infection, whether it is caused by the use of contaminated equipment, indirectly from the hands of healthcare personnel, or by the simple act of touching the mouth or nose after...
Keeping health clinic patients and staff safe from unnecessary infection requires dedicated attention to precautionary practices. Infection control precautions are designed to reduce the risk that an infection will travel from an infected person to an uninfected person. Because people with infections are frequent healthcare...
Managing infectious diseases requires knowledge of not just the realities of existing infectious agents, but also the circumstances that permit them to spread or mutate into different, potentially more lethal pathogens. The World Health Organization (WHO) establishes infection control guidelines that give practitioners around the...
Unlike most professions where graduation with a degree is often the end of the formal education process, staying up to date on current practices means that infection control training never really ends. Nurses and other medical specialists who elect to become Infection Control professionals must...
"Lawsuits change behavior and big lawsuits can make big changes." So said an attorney for plaintiffs who sued Olympus Corporation and Virginia Mason Medical Center (VMMC) for failing to provide adequate cleaning and sterilization instructions for its duodenoscope. Surgeons at VMMC used a contaminated Olympus...
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provide America's medical community with research and data to help it provide citizens with the best care possible. A major focus of the CDC is infection control and prevention, and the health care leader recently released a...
Epidemiologists - those scientists who study the incidence and pathology of infections - keep an eye on hospital-acquired infection statistics (HAIs) as an indicator of the presence of pathogens in health care settings. Even though a hospital or medical clinic is a haven for healing,...
An often overlooked but critically necessary nursing specialty is that of the Infection Control Nurse. During a regular workday, every medical professional faces the myriad of bacteria, fungus, and disease that accompany their patients into the clinic. A dedicated Infection Control Nurse identifies those contaminants,...
Every health care facility benefits from the services of an Infection Control Consultant to ensure the safety of its patients and staff. Clinics needing an infection-focused professional on staff must be careful to scrutinize the education and experience of all applicants to be certain that...