Implementation of contact precautions for multidrug-resistant organisms in the post-COVID-19 pandemic era: An updated national Emerging Infections Network (EIN) survey.

Objective: To understand how healthcare facilities employ contact precautions for patients with multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) in the post-coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) era and explore changes since 2014.

Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Participants: Emerging Infections Network (EIN) physicians involved in infection prevention or hospital epidemiology.

Strategies for developing a successful career in academic medicine.

Academic medicine provides physicians an opportunity for long-term career satisfaction and fulfillment. However, despite the potential for great reward, academic careers can be challenging. To better define approaches to successfully navigate academic medicine, the Southern Society for Clinical Investigation sponsored a workshop titled 'Successful Careers in Academic Medicine' during the 2023 Southern Regional Meeting held in New Orleans; the critical elements of which are highlighted in the following summary.

The impact of COVID-19 on multidrug-resistant organisms causing healthcare-associated infections: a narrative review.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) changed healthcare across the world. With this change came an increase in healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) and a concerning concurrent proliferation of MDR organisms (MDROs). In this narrative review, we describe the impact of COVID-19 on HAIs and MDROs, describe potential causes of these changes, and discuss future directions to combat the observed rise in rates of HAIs and MDRO infections.

Occupational risk factors for severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection among healthcare personnel: A 6-month prospective analysis of the COVID-19 Prevention in Emory Healthcare Personnel (COPE) Study.

Objectives: To determine the incidence of severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection among healthcare personnel (HCP) and to assess occupational risks for SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Design: Prospective cohort of healthcare personnel (HCP) followed for 6 months from May through December 2020.

Setting: Large academic healthcare system including 4 hospitals and affiliated clinics in Atlanta, Georgia.

Poor outcomes in both infection and colonization with carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales.

Objectives: To describe the epidemiology of patients with nonintestinal carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (CRE) colonization and to compare clinical outcomes of these patients to those with CRE infection.

Design: A secondary analysis of Consortium on Resistance Against Carbapenems in and other Enterobacteriaceae 2 (CRACKLE-2), a prospective observational cohort.

Setting: A total of 49 US short-term acute-care hospitals.

Healthcare worker mental models of patient care tasks in the context of infection prevention and control.

Objective: Understanding the cognitive determinants of healthcare worker (HCW) behavior is important for improving the use of infection prevention and control (IPC) practices. Given a patient requiring only standard precautions, we examined the dimensions along which different populations of HCWs cognitively organize patient care tasks (ie, their mental models).

Design: HCWs read a description of a patient and then rated the similarities of 25 patient care tasks from an infection prevention perspective.

Occupational risk factors for severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection among healthcare personnel: A cross-sectional analysis of subjects enrolled in the COVID-19 Prevention in Emory Healthcare Personnel (COPE) study.

Among 353 healthcare personnel in a longitudinal cohort in 4 hospitals in Atlanta, Georgia (May-June 2020), 23 (6.5%) had severe acute respiratory coronavirus virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antibodies. Spending >50% of a typical shift at the bedside (OR, 3.

Carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales bacteriuria and subsequent bacteremia: A population-based study.

Objective: To describe the epidemiology of carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (CRE) bacteriuria and to determine whether urinary catheters increase the risk of subsequent CRE bacteremia.

Design: Using active population- and laboratory-based surveillance we described a cohort of patients with incident CRE bacteriuria and identified risk factors for developing CRE bacteremia within 1 year.

Setting: The study was conducted among the 8 counties of Georgia Health District 3 (HD3) in Atlanta, Georgia.

The impact of an electronic medical record nudge on reducing testing for hospital-onset infection.

Objective: To determine the effect of an electronic medical record (EMR) nudge at reducing total and inappropriate orders testing for hospital-onset Clostridioides difficile infection (HO-CDI).

Design: An interrupted time series analysis of HO-CDI orders 2 years before and 2 years after the implementation of an EMR intervention designed to reduce inappropriate HO-CDI testing. Orders for C.

Sustained decrease in urine culture utilization after implementing a reflex urine culture intervention: A multicenter quasi-experimental study.

Accurately diagnosing urinary tract infections (UTIs) in hospitalized patients remains challenging, requiring correlation of frequently nonspecific symptoms and laboratory findings. Urine cultures (UCs) are often ordered indiscriminately, especially in patients with urinary catheters, despite the Infectious Diseases Society of America guidelines recommending against routine screening for asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB).1,2 Positive UCs can be difficult for providers to ignore, leading to unnecessary antibiotic treatment of ASB.