Category: Infection Prevention and Control

UNMC ID Recognizes Patient Safety Awareness Week and our Biocontainment Unit Professionals

March 12th-18th marks patient safety awareness week, an initiative intended to encourage everyone to learn more about health care safety. Protecting patient safety is one of the most important responsibilities of the health care system and all its members. This week serves to recognize those who further patient safety and spark conversation on how we can continue to improve.

Mar 15, 2023

Canine or Cultures: An Alternative Method for Infection Diagnosis?

Sit. Stay. Roll over. Diagnose an infection? It seems that, in addition to being man’s best friend, dogs make pretty good infectious disease doctors. Or at least that’s the conclusion of two recent studies which trained dogs to identify UTIs or C. difficile infections in real patient samples. The results were impressive!

May 31, 2022

UNMC ID is Hiring! Seeking Medical Director Applicants

The Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, NE is recruiting an infectious diseases physician with interests or experience in infection prevention/healthcare epidemiology to serve as the Medical Director of the Infection Control Assessment and Promotion Program (ICAP). This is an exciting opportunity to lead, manage, and direct continued […]

May 24, 2022

Publication Alert: Leveraging a Preexisting Global Infectious Disease Network for Local Decision Making During a Pandemic

The content below was provided by Jocelyn Herstein, an assistant professor at UNMC and Director of International Partnerships and Programs with the National Emerging Special Pathogens Training and Education Center. She led a recently published study, collaborating with UNMC ID faculty Drs. Angela Hewlett and James Lawler.  What prompted this study? Emerging infectious disease events require a […]

Apr 26, 2022

UNMC ID at #SHEASpring2022 – Where to Find Us!

The SHEA Spring conference starts tomorrow; here is your guide on where to find UNMC ID throughout the conference! Invited Training Course Workshop Lectures Tuesday, April 12th from 10:00am – 10:15am: SHEA/CDC Training Course in Healthcare Epidemiology as presented by our own Kari Simonsen. Tuesday, April 12th from 2:45pm-3:15pm: Case Studies in Pediatric Infection Control (panel […]

Apr 11, 2022

Hot Topics in Healthcare – HAIs and Infection Prevention Post-Pandemic

Post written by Dr. Kelly Cawcutt & originally posted at https://www.cloroxpro.com/blog/hot-topics-in-healthcare-hais-infection-prevention-post-pandemic/ The COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented changes to healthcare throughout the world. Fraught with high volumes of patients and paucity of resources and testing, combined with personal protective equipment (PPE) and staffing shortages the past year has taught the healthcare community lasting lessons in resilience.  The […]

Sep 13, 2021

Diversity in Probiotics and Diversity in Clinical Trials: Opportunities for Improvement

This is a Journal Club review by Dr. Jasmine Marcelin of “A randomized controlled trial of Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG on antimicrobial-resistant organism colonization” (Rauseo, A. et al. Infection Control & Hospital Epidemiology, (2021).

Aug 17, 2021

UVGI N95 Decontamination – a Method to Extend the Supply of N95 Respirators in Time of Emergency

Outbreaks due to respiratory viruses pose a unique threat to health care as they require often significant amounts of personal protective equipment. Based upon previous modeling of severe influenza pandemics, the need for N95 filtering face piece respirators (FFRs) would range between 1.7 and 7.3 billion FFR’s, however there were only an estimated 60 million […]

May 4, 2021

UNMC ID at SHEA 2021 – Where to Find Us!

The SHEA 2021 Spring conference is here and this is your guide on where to find our UNMC ID team presenting throughout the conference, starting with pre-conference workshops. And yes, there is still time to sign up and attend! Lectures/Workshops Pre-Conference Workshop: Sharing Our Science: Using Modern Means to Get Your Message Out There; Using […]

Apr 8, 2021

Changing the Culture of Culturing

Originally written by Dr. Cawcutt and posted on IDSA Journal Club Despite a recommendation from the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) to procure blood cultures within the first hour after sepsis recognition, implementation of this practice been suboptimal. This prompted the implementation of routine blood culture obtainment in non-elective intensive care unit (ICU) admissions, whether infection […]

Mar 25, 2021