Healthcare Worker Hand Contamination at Critical Moments in Outpatient Care Settings

Frequent Contamination of Healthcare Worker Scrubs

hand hygiene in healthcare settings: clean hands save lives

Extent and predictors of microbial hand contamination in a tertiary care ophthalmic outpatient practice.

PURPOSE To measure the extent of microbial hand contamination among ophthalmologists during routine clinic practice and examine its association with hand cleansing practices and beliefs, glove use, and patient load. METHODS This was a single-masked analysis of resident and transient flora of ophthalmologists before and after patient examination and after handwashing by agar imprints of the do...

Outpatient Healthcare Settings and Transmission of Clostridium difficile

BACKGROUND Recent reports suggest that community-associated Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) (i.e., no healthcare facility admission within 90 days) may be increasing in frequency. We hypothesized that outpatient clinics could be an important source for acquisition of community-associated CDI. METHODS We performed a 6-month prospective study of CDI patients to determine frequency of and ...

New anticoagulants in critical care settings.

Thromboembolic events commonly occur in critically ill patients, and although they do not consistently present with specific signs and symptoms, they are associated with high morbity and mortality. Antithrombotic agents are the mainstay of the prevention and treatment of venous thromboembolism, and they are also used for stroke prevention in atrial fibrillation, embolism prevention in heart fai...