Infection Control Matters

Celebrating 20 years of Teleclass Education with Paul Webber

In this episode, Martin Kiernan and Brett Mitchell talk to Paul Webber in the 20th year of the Webber Teleclass series that remains free for all in low-income countries.
Originally envisaged by his friend and mentor Dr Syed Sattar as being a short series for an Canadian audience, there have now been in excess of 750 editions with episode audiences sometimes numbering in the tens of thousands. The speaker faculty is a veritable 'Who's who' in the infection prevention world and the free online recordings library is a great resource and can be found here https://webbertraining.com/recordingslibraryc4.php
 

More questions than answers! Changes in bacteraemia patterns during COVID with Dr Luke Moore

In this episode, Martin is jouned by Dr Luke Moore (@dr_luke_moore), Consultant in Infectious Diseases, Clinical Microbiology and Virology at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust in the UK and Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London. We discuss the recent paper from his group (https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-06159-8), the findings of which were quite surprising. Why did bacteraemia from Enterobacterales go down, Staph. aureus and Strep. pneumoniae stay the same and Coag neg staphylococci increase? Absolutely more questions are raised by this interesting paper, many of which if answered could provide benefits for antimicrobial stewardship and infection prevention activities.

The impact of heatlhcare associated infections - mortality, length of stay and cost

In this podcast, we discuss an article just published in Clinical Infectious Disease which reports data from 134 hospitals on mortality, length of stay and costs of common infections. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32822465/

Prevention of healthcare associated pneumonia (HAP) (Part A) with Dr Victoria Ewan

In this podcast, Martin and Brett talk healthcare associated pneumonia (HAP) with Dr Victoria Ewan. Vicky is consultant academic geriatrician at South Tees Hospitals (Middlesbrough, United Kingdom) who has undertaken ground breaking working around our understanding of HAP.
We talk about what HAP is, common causes and potential strategies to prevent. We plan on visiting this topic again at a latter date, hence this is "Part A".
Some papers we refer to in this podcast:
https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(21)00275-9/fulltext
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28781029/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25923662/
Reviews on this topic:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31279704/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5109660/

Gaming, apps and Infection Control with Dr Robbert Bentvelsen and Ender Holten

In this podcast, Brett Mitchell discusses a paper that provides an overview of available apps for HAI prevention, including functionality, quality and usefulness with two of the authors - Dr Robbert Bentvelsen (@rbentvelsen) and Ender Holten (@EnderHolt) from the Leiden University Medical Center (@LUMC_Leiden). The article "eHealth for the prevention of healthcare-associated infections: a scoping review" is published in the Journal of Hospital Infection.
Bentvelsen, R. G., Holten, E., Chavannes, N. H., & Veldkamp, K. E. (2021). eHealth for the prevention of healthcare-associated infections: a scoping review. Journal of Hospital Infection. (https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0195-6701%2821%2900182-1)
 
In the podcast, reference is also made to a book. Details are: "Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping and Development" by Jeremy Gibson Bond. Publisher(s): Addison-Wesley Professional;ISBN: 9780134659909

Role of clinical scientists in infection prevention and control with Dr Elaine Cloutman-Green

In this episode, Martin talks to Consultant Clinical Scientist Dr Elaine Cloutman-Green BEM about her role at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in the UK. Elaine is the first Clinical Scientist to also have the role of Infection Control Doctor in a UK hospital and we talk about the untapped potential for Clinical Scientists to contribute to infection prevention and control teams. Elaine is also on twitter (@girlymicro) has a blog (https://girlymicrobiologist.com/) and was recently awarded a British Epire Medal in recognition of her contribution as a Clinical Scientist.

Sociology and Qualitative research and IPC with Professor Maria Northcote and Dr Cassie Curryer

In this episode we briefly touch on the role of sociology and what it can bring to infection control. We also discuss the value of qualitative research in infection prevention and control. Our guests this week are Professor Maria Northcote (Avondale University College) and Dr Cassie Curryer (University of Newcastle). 

Hand hygiene at critical points and the sequence of patient care with Professor Loreen Herwaldt

In this episode, Martin talks to Professor Loreen Herwaldt, from the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine.  We discuss three new papers on hand hygiene compliance that have come from data originally collected that looked at the implementation of surveillance feedback and barrier precautions for a study published in the NEJM (Huskins, W.C., et al., Intervention to reduce transmission of resistant bacteria in intensive care. N Engl J Med, 2011. 364(15): p. 1407-18. https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa1000373?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov). Two new papers focusing on hand hygiene aspects of care have already been published and a third has also been accepted. The first looked at hand hygiene compliance at critical points of care (Chang, N.N., et al., Hand Hygiene Compliance at Critical Points of Care. Clin Infect Dis, 2021. 72(5): p. 814-820. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa130) and the second examined the sequence of patient care (Chang, N.C., et al., Hand hygiene and the sequence of patient care. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol, 2021: p. 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1017/ice.2021.82). The third paper that we discuss is a forthcoming paper on the time taken to perform hand hygiene.

Unintended consequences for infection prevention and control during COVID-19

In this podcast, Phil and Brett discuss a paper from April 2021 published by Wee and colleagues, in the American Journal of Infection Control titled "Unintended consequences of infection prevention and control measures during COVID-19 pandemic"
Full reference: Wee, L. E. I., Conceicao, E. P., Tan, J. Y., Magesparan, K. D., Amin, I. B. M., Ismail, B. B. S., ... & Ling, M. L. (2021). Unintended consequences of infection prevention and control measures during COVID-19 pandemic. American Journal of Infection Control, 49(4), 469-477. Link to paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7610096/

Hand hygiene with Professor Didier Pittet

In this podcast, we hear from Professor Didier Pittet about how the hand hygiene campaign originated from identifying a problem in one hospital and translating that across the world. We also discuss how COVID-19 may change behaviour long term, the theme for WHO Hand Hygiene Day on the 5th May, ideas for improving hand hygiene in your institution, the use of automated hand hygiene monitoring and influencing people.
Professor Didier Pittet is an infectious diseases expert and the director of the Infection Control Programme and WHO Collaborating Centre on Patient Safety, University Hospital of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland.
Global Hand Hygiene Day information can be found here https://www.who.int/campaigns/world-hand-hygiene-day/2021