With a few words, a family's life is forever changed: "It's cancer." For any patient, these words bring anxiety and fear. When that patient is a child, however, no words can express the emotions that send shock waves through a family, friends, and community. Today's post begins a three-part story of one such young patient, a little boy named Jack. (Best of all, Jack's story has a happy ending.) During Childhood Cancer Awareness Month join us as we see the challenges of pediatric cancer treatment and infection control through the eyes of a boy and his mother.

The Serenity Prayer is a well-known piece of advice about how to approach life's challenges. In it, the speaker asks for serenity to accept the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things that can, and wisdom to know the difference. When it comes to infection control, the same sentiment could apply to risk factors. There are some risks that cannot be changed, health challenges that we just have to accept and work around. But there are those we can change, and these are modifiable risk factors. The wisdom to know the difference? We'll try to tackle that topic in today's post.

Millions of American children return to school over the next week, officially kicking off the academic year filled promise. Alongside the promise of learning new things comes another promise: The certainty of picking up some kind of bug that will cause anything from the sniffles to time in bed. Today we'll explore some of the major pathogens that strike in busy classrooms full of kids as well as a few steps you can take to avoid some of those hallway bullies.

Two interesting studies came out in the past year that examine the patient's perspective in hospital acquired infections. The patient experience happens to be an overlooked area in research, despite the valuable insights that these individuals can provide. In today's post, we'll look at what these two important studies reveal about the patient's personal experience and how to engage the patient more in HAI research.

With Take Your Cat to the Vet Day tomorrow and National Dog Day falling next Monday, we wanted to talk about the health of our furry friends, their medical care, and how they have evolved to fight infections as they moved from the wild into our homes. Today’s post will shed some light on how animals join us in the fight against pathogens while also revealing additional opportunities for Preventive|Biocidal Surfaces™ to play a role in reducing the deadliest of those pathogens.

Of the ten most in-demand jobs for 2019, half are in the medical field. At highest demand are home health aides, with projected growth in this area estimated at around 40% by 2024. The need for medical administrators comes in at 20% estimated growth, along with great demand for nurses at every level. But perhaps surprisingly, among these high-demand jobs is that of the medical technologist, a critical staff position in the fight against infection control and prevention. Today's post will explore this behind-the-scenes job and its critical role in healthcare facilities.

A couple years back, the EOS^CU Team had the honor of presenting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) campus outside of Atlanta, GA. During the meeting with the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, we were able to share information about our product as well as data from our first clinical study. This meeting was anything but one-sided, however - the experts at the CDC were able to identify directions and partnerships we should explore in the future. This visit prompted us to present this post about the CDC, and what it does for our nation and the world on a daily basis.

Our blog covers many topics in the healthcare field, most of which focus on preventable hospital-acquired infections. In honor of National Immunization Awareness Month, we focus on a different category of preventable infection, those viral infections that can be avoided thanks to vaccines. 

Long-Term Acute Care Hospitals (LTACHs) are facilities serving only patients with serious medical conditions who need at least 25 days of ICU-level care. They evolved from the TB sanitoriums and other specialized treatment facilities of the past, and have experienced significant growth over the past decade. In today’s post, we’ll explore the purpose of these new medical facilities, as well as the implications for infection control when serving these high-risk populations.

Superbugs, or antibiotic-resistant bacteria, are posing an increasingly difficult challenge for healthcare facilities. Some bacteria are resistant to certain classes of antibiotics. Some are resistant to all but the strongest, and often most expensive, antibiotics. These superbugs are called MDR, multiple-drug-resistant. Others still, while very rare, are resistant to all known antibiotics. One example, carbapanem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE) is resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics, has high mortality rates, and can easily spread its superpowers to neighboring organisms.

So how do we keep helping create these superbugs that are so hard to kill? And what can we do about it?