Assessing physician utilization of laboratory practice guidelines: barriers and opportunities for improvement.

Objectives: To assess physician utilization of laboratory practice guidelines (LPGs)³ to improve LPG uptake and use.

Design And Methods: A statewide survey of 4987 primary care physicians (PCPs) and 75 infectious disease (ID) specialists was conducted in 2005-2006 to correlate guideline source with users' awareness, utilization, and perceived usefulness of LPGs. We compared LPGs developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to LPGs developed by the Washington State Department of Health through its Clinical Laboratory Advisory Council (CLAC).

Non-pharmaceutical interventions during an outbreak of 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus infection at a large public university, April-May 2009.

Nonpharmaceutical interventions (NPIs), such as home isolation, social distancing, and infection control measures, are recommended by public health agencies as strategies to mitigate transmission during influenza pandemics. However, NPI implementation has rarely been studied in large populations. During an outbreak of 2009 Pandemic Influenza A (H1N1) virus infection at a large public university in April 2009, an online survey was conducted among students, faculty, and staff to assess knowledge of and adherence to university-recommended NPI.

Evaluation of effectiveness of a continuing education program on antimicrobial susceptibility testing.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a course designed to increase use of the most recently published Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) standards for antimicrobial susceptibility testing (AST) and reporting.

Design: A one-day continuing education course in AST was designed and delivered at multiple sites. Data collected from course evaluations, pre- and post-tests, and pre- and post-practices assessments were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the training.

Nonpharmaceutical interventions implemented by US cities during the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic.

Context: A critical question in pandemic influenza planning is the role nonpharmaceutical interventions might play in delaying the temporal effects of a pandemic, reducing the overall and peak attack rate, and reducing the number of cumulative deaths. Such measures could potentially provide valuable time for pandemic-strain vaccine and antiviral medication production and distribution. Optimally, appropriate implementation of nonpharmaceutical interventions would decrease the burden on health care services and critical infrastructure.

Evaluation of the status of laboratory practices and the need for continuing education in medical mycology.

A survey to determine the need for training in medical mycology was sent to 605 US laboratories. Training needs were determined by comparing actual laboratory mycology practices with recommended practices, documenting the extent of mycology training reported by employees, and asking respondents to specify the fungi they considered most difficult to identify. The response rate was 56.