Editor's Note Educating anesthesia providers on the World Health Organization’s five indications for hand hygiene, increasing access to hand hygiene products in the OR, and monitoring  hand hygiene among anesthesia providers can improve hand hygiene compliance, this study finds. Hand hygiene was observed in three phases: Preimplementation, postimplementation, and 60…

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Editor's Note The risk of hand contamination was higher when healthcare workers (HCWs) removed their gloves before their gowns during personal protective equipment (PPE) doffing, and HCWs who made multiple PPE doffing errors were more likely to have contaminated clothes after patient interactions, this study finds. In this analysis of…

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Contaminated surgical instruments made ECRI Institute’s 2019 annual top 10 list of health technology hazards, coming in at number five: “Mishandling flexible endoscopes after disinfection can lead to patient infections.” Number two on the list in 2018 was “Endoscope reprocessing failures continue to expose patients to infection risk.” It’s not…

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Surgical site infections are multifactorial, and perioperative leaders often struggle with how to reduce or eliminate them. In 2013, after an unexplained increase in surgical site infections (SSIs) among patients undergoing total hip arthroplasty at our facility, we began to investigate the cause. A fairly robust ERAS (enhanced recovery after…

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Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration on March 12 announced that a federal judge entered a consent decree against Guardian Pharmacy Services (Dallas, Texas) to stop the company from producing compounded drug products intended to be sterile until the company complies with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C)…

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Editor's Note Provider attire is a potential source of pathogenic bacterial transmission in healthcare settings, this review study finds. A total of 22 articles were included in this analysis, which found that provider attire was commonly colonized by multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs), with white coats laundered less frequently than scrubs. The…

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Editor's Note Terminal sterilization of duodenoscopes can be achieved with a hydrogen peroxide-ozone sterilizer, this study finds. A sterility assurance level of 10-6 was achieved under laboratory worst-case conditions and under clinical conditions using a hydrogen peroxide-ozone sterilizer with regulatory clearance for terminal sterilization of duodenoscopes (STERIZONE VP4, TSO3 Inc,…

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Editor's Note The Ambulatory Surgery Center Association (ASCA) on February 26 announced that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released a Memorandum Summary with updates to Appendix Z of the State Operations Manual, which outlines the Emergency Preparedness requirements for CMS providers and suppliers. The primary change that affects…

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Editor's Note Making a simple change to the electronic system used by physicians to order urine tests can cut by 45% the number of bacterial cultures ordered without compromising the identification of patients who need treatment for urinary tract infections (UTIs), this study finds. In this analysis of 18,954 patients…

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Much emphasis has been placed on high-level disinfection over the past several years; however, low- and intermediate-level disinfection are also performed in healthcare facilities and are an important part of an infection prevention program. Noncritical items, defined by the Spaulding Classification as those that may contact intact skin, are cleaned…

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