Month: November 2018

Top 10 Things We Are Thankful for in ID – Letterman Style

Life is better with gratitude. Today, whether or not you celebrate Thanksgiving, we want to continue to show our gratitude and thankfulness to be able to help diagnose, prevent, treat, cure and even advance, the science of medicine. Now, let’s have a little fun! We are grateful for: 10. Hand washing with those cute seasonal […]

Nov 22, 2018

Earrings In Healthcare Workers: Friend or Foe?

Ear piercing among people, including healthcare workers, is a common trend. Katsuse et al, attempted to make a correlation between ear piercings and healthcare-associated infections. In order to prove this relationship, researchers sampled the earlobes and fingers of 200 nurses working at a university hospital. 128 of those nurses had pierced earlobes and 72 of […]

Nov 20, 2018

UNMC Infectious Diseases Fellows are Antibiotics Aware

The following was written by Dr. Raj Karnatak, 2nd year ID fellow at UNMC; a reflection of his current Antimicrobial Stewardship/Infection Control rotation: The UNMC Infectious Diseases fellowship antimicrobial stewardship and infection control rotation provides robust training for fellows in both antimicrobial stewardship and infection control. Training is well designed with education in all the […]

Nov 16, 2018

How Nebraska ASAP is Making Everyone Antibiotic Aware

The following was written by Dr. Salman Ashraf, co-Medical Director of the Nebraska Antimicrobial Stewardship Assessment & Promotion Program (ASAP): Antibiotic Resistance is one of the most urgent threats to the public health. Overuse and misuse of antibiotics allows the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Unfortunately, a significant proportion of antibiotic use in various healthcare settings […]

Nov 15, 2018

Nebraska Medicine is Proud to #BeAntibioticsAware

Our Antimicrobial Stewardship Program (ASP) at Nebraska Medicine has been in place since 2004. Over the years our program has changed and improved sought to expand and improve its approach with the goal of providing extraordinary care to our patients. Rather than an overly restrictive practice, our program has we have emphasized constant regular communication […]

Nov 14, 2018

Governor Ricketts Proclaims Antibiotic Awareness Week in Nebraska

Last year, Nebraska’s Governor Pete Ricketts signed a proclamation declaring Antibiotic Awareness Week in Nebraska, and he again signed a proclamation this year, declaring November 12-18 Antibiotic Awareness Week in our state. Once again, Dr. Maureen Tierney, leader of Nebraska’s Healthcare Associated Infections Program, championed the drafting of the proclamation and received support from the Governor for […]

Nov 12, 2018

Does the Clostridium Smell Diffy? Even the Dogs Disagree…

The C. difficile sniffing dogs are back! There are several prior reports of individual dogs being trained to “sniff out” C. difficile. In a novel approach, the authors of this study trained two dogs simultaneously, and then compared interrater reliability between sniff attempts. They used toxigenic C. difficile frozen stool samples (GDH EIA and PCR […]

Nov 5, 2018