Category: Infection Prevention and Control

Infections Know No Bounds – The Reality of Infections in Healthcare Facilities

By: Kelly Cawcutt, MD, MS, FACP, FIDSA; Sponsored by Clorox Healthcare Infectious diseases remain a critical cause of morbidity, mortality and cost in all healthcare facilities including outpatient clinics, long-term care facilities and acute care facilities, such as hospitals. Infections can come from two main places – inside the hospital walls and from outside within […]

Dec 29, 2020

#PharmToExamTable: Treatment of Clostridioides difficile infection in adults: What is the evidence supporting a tapered vancomycin regimen?

This is a continuation of this month’s #PharmToExamTable question about C. difficile treatment: What is the evidence supporting a tapered vancomycin regimen?

-Answered by Andre Wilt, PharmD 2020 Graduate of UNMC College of Pharmacy (Reviewed by Scott Bergman PharmD and Andrew Watkins PharmD)

Sep 15, 2020

#PharmToExamTable: Treatment of Clostridioides difficile infection in adults: Guideline review

This month’s #PharmToExamTable question was a review of Clostridioides difficile treatment guidelines:
-Answered by Andre Wilt, PharmD 2020 Graduate of UNMC College of Pharmacy (Reviewed by Scott Bergman PharmD and Andrew Watkins PharmD)

Sep 8, 2020

Fighting Fear in COVID-19

As we have lived through this pandemic as Infectious Diseases physicians and leaders in Infection Control and Employee Health, we also have encountered nearly unprecedented fear within our workplace.

Jul 7, 2020

Journal Club: Should vancomycin be given as prophylaxis for Clostridioides difficile infections?

The following is a review by one of our fellows, Dr. Randy McCreery, who at a recent journal club presented a paper by Johnson, et al.: Effectiveness of Oral Vancomycin for Prevention of Healthcare Facility-Onset Clostridioides difficile Infection in Targeted Patients During Systemic Antibiotic Exposure, Clinical Infectious Diseases, 28 September 2019. In addition, Drs. McCreery, Cawcutt, […]

Mar 10, 2020

Introducing AMDA UTI Consensus Statement for Diagnosis, Treatment and Prevention of Urinary Tract Infections

The AMDA – The Society for Post-Acute and Long Term-Care Medicine convened a UTI consensus statement workgroup in 2017 to outline best practices for the management of UTI in post-acute and long-term care (PALTC) settings. The workgroup consisted of various national and international subject matter experts and was chaired by UNMC faculty Dr. Muhammad Salman Ashraf, who […]

Feb 18, 2020

Novel Coronavirus – What You Need to Know Now

Content courtesy of Dr. Angela Hewlett Coronaviruses are common respiratory pathogens, and generally cause mild symptoms of the ‘common cold’.  However, other coronavirus strains have been known to cause outbreaks that lead to more severe disease like pneumonia, and even death.  Examples of these include SARS and MERS, which are both coronaviruses with mortality rates […]

Jan 23, 2020

Blood culture contamination–it’s a big deal

Blood cultures are a key diagnostic test to detect bacteremia and appropriately treat patients with sepsis and are performed approximately 30 million times in the United States yearly. Unfortunately, contamination of blood cultures occurs in the 0.5% to 5% of samples (approximately 25% of positive blood cultures are due to contamination) which leads to inappropriate […]

Jan 21, 2020

Surveillance for vascular catheter associated complications in home health care is needed

Content written by Dr. Mark Rupp.  Impressive gains in the prevention of central line associated bloodstream infections (CLABSI) have been realized in recent years in US hospitals. However, with efforts to improve efficiency and decrease hospital length of stay, patients are increasingly being discharged to home health care to receive intravenous therapy. The rate of […]

Jan 6, 2020

Evaluating Next-Generation Melioidosis Diagnostics

In addition to being one of our ID physicians, Dr. James Lawler serves as the Director or International Programs and Innovation at the Global Center for Health Security, a center that will focus on training federal personnel to manage highly infectious diseases, and Director of Clinical and Biodefense Research at the National Strategic Research Institute.  His interest in […]

Dec 23, 2019