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In this issue we conclude our two-part special report "MRSA Patient Stories" with comments from clinicians and public health officials, particularly in light of emerging data indicating MRSA infections can be sharply reduced through patient screening programs.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is finalizing new guidelines on prevention of norovirus infections and was expected to release them soon as this issue went to press.
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A universal screening program for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) at Loyola University Medical Center in Chicago is reducing infections by approximately 70% annually, says Jorge Parada, MD, MPH, infectious disease chief at the teaching hospital.
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Applying the considerable power of infection control interventions across more than 150 hospitals nationwide, the Veterans Affairs (VA) system is planning to target Clostridium difficle in its next major initiative, Hospital Infection Control & Prevention learned.
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Eliminating needlesticks was once an official federal goal. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention promoted it as a "health care challenge." More modestly, Healthy People 2010 set a measurable goal of reducing needlesticks among hospital-based health care workers by 30%.
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While The Joint Commission will have no new National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) for 2011, it has revised elements of performance (EPs) within those goals to remove specific requirements related to clinical practice. The changes to the EPs are effective immediately.
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Karen Daley, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN, remembers the stick as if it happened in slow-motion, the details still clear to her 12 years later. She had helped a co-worker draw blood from a patient in the emergency department. She turned to reach behind her for the sharps container. Mounted high on the wall, it was overfilled, but she couldn't see it well because it was above eye level.
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The family and friends of MRSA victims are sometimes galvanized to action by the death of a loved one. One of them is Tara Hopper, who became a lawyer and MRSA activist after she watched her best friend Elizabeth Ann Reilly fall to the bacterial infection in the prime of her short life.
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During last year's H1N1 influenza pandemic, health care workers inadvertently transmitted flu to their co-workers, in some cases triggering a hospital-based outbreak.
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In 2003, Jeanine Thomas of Hinesdale, IL, founded the MRSA Survivors Network, the organization which successfully lobbied to have Oct. 2 declared World MRSA Day and October World MRSA Month. A tireless activist for MRSA awareness, Thomas recently sat down with Hospital Infection Control & Prevention for the following interview.
