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 soaps – No one needs a real-life learning experience about… Continue Reading
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 the nurses sampled did not. When sampling the fingers, the… Continue Reading
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 core elements of stewardship and infection control. Fellows attend dedicated… Continue Reading
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 continues to be unnecessary or inappropriate. About a third (30%)… Continue Reading
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 with our clinicians through a robust audit-and-feedback program. Physician medical… Continue Reading
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 this observance. Formerly known as Get Smart About Antibiotic Week, US Antibiotic… Continue Reading
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 positive) and negative controls in an institution where prevalence of… Continue Reading
