Marketing in healthcare isn’t like marketing shoes or soft drinks, and for good reason. When lives are on the line, the claims made about healthcare...
Incluso en el mundo actual, después de la pandemia de COVID-19, los patógenos infecciosos siguen siendo noticia, llamando nuestra atención hacia las...
In the field of infection prevention and control (IPC), diagnostic stewardship is emerging as a critical strategy for reducing healthcare-associated...
In a previous post, we discovered the many entities that regulate the physical operation of a healthcare facility. Who is responsible for making sure...
In The Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA)'s 10-Year Research Plan, the organization highlights the critical role of implementation...
A surprising product recall this week might remind healthcare workers of a known risk in hospital infection control and prevention: The contamination...
Think back to the last time you or a loved one was a patient in a hospital or healthcare facility. What things do you remember most? Is it the stress...
On a fall day in 1957, a young girl learns about the launch of Earth's first artificial satellite and falls in love with science. Perhaps she rushes...
On a sunny day in the early 1950s a young girl, the daughter of a medical secretary and a waiter, witnessed a terrifying event. Her mother collapsed...
Designing for healthcare environments is a delicate balancing act. Architects and designers must navigate a web of constraints, making trade-offs to...
Any and every day is a good day to celebrate nurses! (February 6th, however, is the 37th Annual Black Nurses Day on Capitol Hill!) These hard-working...
It's no wonder why we have long associated the heart with life and love. It races when we are nervous or exerting ourselves. It beats with comforting...
Every second Monday in January, National Clean Your Desk Day rolls around to remind us of the importance of a clean and organized workspace. This day...
Germs, by definition, are viruses, bacteria, spores, fungi, and prions that can make you sick. And all germs are not created alike. Not only does the...
One of the predictions for healthcare in 2025 is the growth in the concierge medicine sector. Concierge medicine, also known as boutique or retainer...
Hospitals clean with great attention to what organisms caused illness within that patient room. The pathogen could be a virus, a bacteria, a fungus,...
As we reflect on the many things we have to be thankful for, it’s easy to think about family, friends, and the comforts of home. But there’s a group...
Hospitals are complex ecosystems that require meticulous planning and real-time data to function effectively. One critical metric in this operational...
Without much fanfare or media coverage (and often with misplaced public criticism due to rampant misinformation) thousands of researchers do tireless...
Today is Veteran’s Day, a day to celebrate the dedication and sacrifice of those Americans who served our country as a member of our armed services....
It's Halloween week, so we are exploring one of the spookier microorganisms that can infect us. Today we explore the swimmer bacteria cell, Proteus, ...
Managing and sharing vast amounts of patient data across various platforms and systems remains one of healthcare's most challenging tasks. One of the...
Today's trio of pathogens are stealthy, living on our bodies without causing us harm but wreaking havoc when they find a way inside a bacteria-free,...
New England has been put onhigh alert thanks to an outbreak of Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE), a rare virus that can lead to the deaths of 30% of...
It is estimated that there are 5×1030 bacteria on Earth. That's 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, or 5 nonillion. We have not even begun to...
Millions of American children have returned to school or will very soon, officially kicking off the academic year. Alongside the promise of learning...
In formal descriptions of the germ-fighting powers of antibacterial and biocidal products, the terms "Gram positive" and "Gram negative" are used as...
Around 248 million years ago, a mass extinction wipes out most life on Earth. Half of all animal families become extinct. Almost every single marine...
It seems like it's not officially summer without at least once newspaper headline warning us about "flesh-eating bacteria" cases connected to popular...
The Plague, that is, an infectious disease caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis, ravaged Europe during the 1400s, where it was known as "the Black...
As we enjoy summer, many of us are planning to travel to see loved ones or take a well-deserved vacation. A growing number of Americans are planning...
A young woman sits in a clinic halfway around the world, waiting for her COVID-19 vaccine. The entities involved in getting that vaccine to her, all...
In this blog, we have covered the rigorous protocol set by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a product to make public health claims, that...
What do you do if you discover that 50% of your healthcare residents are colonized with a multi-drug resistant organism (MDRO)? You'd probably adjust...
On Memorial Day, we remember those men and women who died serving our country as a member of the armed forces. Traditionally, the day is set aside to...
Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) play an important role in today's healthcare system. Most (45) states have at least one of the over 1,300 CAHs, but...
I just touched that door! What could be on it? Oh no - I also pushed that elevator button and that person just coughed! Are these some of your common...
This is a challenging time for nurses. With critically understaffed facilities, strikes, and the growing commercialization of healthcare, nurses find...
Spring and summer mean conference season for Infection Preventionists and other medical practitioners! Academic and exposition/trade conferences are...
In the world of risk mitigation, there are a number of established concepts that encompass the many ways to avoid harm. These concepts also apply to...
At no other time in history has the patient had access to the amount of information about illness, had the legal and societal (and financial) rights...
Graph Neural Networks (GNNs) are computer algorithms that take data from graphs and uses relationships between the data points to make predictions or...
Achieving and maintaining sanitized surfaces in hospitals requires an arsenal cleaning and disinfecting products, with quaternary ammonium compounds...
The first African-American to join the American Society for Microbiology was a woman. The first African-American to receive a PhD in Microbiology was...
One of the many concepts that have entered the public consciousness since the COVID-19 pandemic is the idea of healthcare equity. Issues of race are...
While the general population may use terms like sterilizer, disinfectant and sanitizer interchangeably, they actually have very specific definitions...
Over the past years, and with an uptick since COVID, the acronym "ESG" has been popping up in discussions related to investing, corporate values, and...
Ever since the COVID pandemic, hospitals have become more adept at thinking outside the box, or rather, outside the patient room. For some hospitals,...
Germ theory, the idea that infection is caused by microscopic organisms unseen to the naked eye, is only a few hundred years old. This theory focuses...
Alongside its work in the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) maintains an ongoing international presence, providing...
We are in the midst of the busy vacation air travel season. Therefore, our attention turns to the packed plains that will carry you to your relaxing...
Social media has become integrated into our daily lives more than any other technology. To date, 3 out of 4 American adults have a Facebook account,...
Eradicating pathogens from environmental surfaces in hospitals is a daily fight. Keeping bacteria from reproducing on surfaces, finding reservoirs in...
As a general consumer, one most likely has little need to know the difference between a treated article claim and a public health claim. However, as...
Whenever a product with EPA-registered Public Health Claims puts those claims in writing, you'll see an * or t after the word bacteria or germs. For...
In the first part of this series, we explored how quality of life is calculated, a complex process used by healthcare researchers as they attempt to...
How do you put an economic value on a human life? Why would you ever want to? As difficult as this quantification may be, it is a necessary practice...
As a response to the growing global and national threat of antibiotic resistance, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) established a...
Radical. Unconventional. Irreverent. Dr. Abigail Salyers entered the field of microbiology as an outsider and ended up bringing the field into a new...
Since the 1980's March has been recognized as Women’s History Month, a time to celebrate the struggles and successes. While there has been tremendous...
In a Baltimore, MD laboratory in the 1970s, a researcher made a discovery that would revolutionize our ability to detect the presence of microscopic...
It seems like everyone is talking about ChatGPT, the seemingly all-knowing chatbot created by OpenAI. Through an online interface, anyone can ask the...
A seismic shift in human civilization occurred when we learned how to plant and harvest our own food. The advent of agriculture meant access to more...
Language is by far the most astonishing difference between humans and all other life on Earth. The richness, diversity, prevalence and pervasiveness...
The medical chart is set to become a thing of the past. Those thick folders containing your medical history are steadily being replaced by electronic...
Many healthcare concerns will follow us into the new year, some we have carried for decades and some that have become more threatening thanks to the...
The Case-Mix Index (CMI) has been defined in many ways. One definition might read "a relative value assigned to a diagnostic-related group." Another...