Infection Control Matters

In this third special edition from the 2021 ACIPC Conference, Brett and Martin talk to Distinguished Professor Lidia Morawska about the science of air. Lidia was named in Times magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world for helping highlight the airborne spread of COVID-19.  Topics includes in this podcast include the science of aerosolisation from the respiratory tract, activ...

In this second special edition from the 2021 ACIPC Conference, Brett Mitchell and Martin Kiernan talk to Drs Mary Wyer and Su-yin Hor. Mary and Su-Yin's work on Video Reflexive Ethnography (VRE - not that one) is world-reknowned with many publications. In this discussion they outline how the use of  video to examine and develop practice has helped in biopreparedness as well as its uses in other ar...

In this special ACIPC conference episode, Brett Mitchell and Martin Kiernan talk to Dr Gillian-Ray-Barruel, from Griffith University School of Nursing and Midwifery and QEII Jubilee Hospital, Brisbane. Gillian is presenting at the 2021 virtual ACIPC Conference on urinary catheter awareness. Gillian has an long standing interest in medical device placement, and this paper focuses on patient and sta...

In this podcast, Martin Kiernan talks to Dr Alicia Demirjian about the issue of seemingly increasing reports of Staphylococcus capitis cases in neonates. Alicia is Consultant Epidemiologist at the Evelina Children's hospital in London and leads the antimicrobial resistance and prescribing team at the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) - formerly Public Health England. Alicia has been working on thi...

In this episode, Martin Kiernan talks to Prof Heather Loveday, Director of the Richard Wells Research Centre at the University of West London about an lecture recently given at the 2021 IPS Conference. The topic discussed centres on the role that fundamental care has in the prevention of healthcare-associated infections and the impact of 'missed' care. Papers for futher reading on these topics are...

In this week's episode, Martin Kiernan talks to Dr Jon Otter of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospital NHS Trust in the UK about a couple of Jon's recent blog postings on the popular "Reflections" blog ( https://reflectionsipc.com/ ). We first discuss a paper in the New England Journal of Medicine that reported on a study that examined the use of monoclonal antibodies in preventing infection in unvaccinate...

In this episode, Prof Brett Mitchell talks to Dr Carl-Johan Frankel from the Department of Infection Control, Lund University, Sweden about his recent paper examining the risk of transmission of Norovirus to roomates. Does norovirus transmit readily to other occupants? The findings may well surprise you! The paper is here: https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(21)00313-3/fu...

In another special edition from the 2021 IPS conference in Liverpool UK, Martin Kiernan talks to Dr Jon Otter, who presented a paper on improving and broadening surgical site infection surveillance. But to whom does it matter and how can IPC Teams achieve engagement with other clinical specialities and managers of healthcare providers? Shockingly in this episode Jon admits to finding a qualitative...

In this episode from the IPS conference, Prof Brett Mitchell is joined by Dr Evonne Curran who has worked in the field of infection prevention and control for a number of years, was a Nurse Consultant with Health Protection Scotland and is now an independent consultant. Together they discuss the relevance of guidelines to clinical practice and whether the development process is really producing gu...

In this final episode at ICPIC 2021 (Geneva), Martin Kiernan talks to Professor Andreas Voss  from the Radboud University Medical Centre (Radboudumc) and Canisus-Wilhelmina Ziekenhuis in the Netherlands. Andreas is always a sought after speaker for his engaging style whilst getting to the heart of the matter. To get the most from this podcast, you might need to look at the papers we mention below....

In another special edition from ICPIC, Martin talks to An Caluwaerts, IPC Specialist from Kliniek Sint Jan, Brussels. This was a poster presentation that was selected as part of a poster walk and it is a practical piece of work that describes the process of calculating the number of staff (and hours) needed to clean a standard hospital ward. A copy of the poster can be downloaded below.   DETERMIN...

In another episode from the 2021 ICPIC Conference, Martin Kiernan talks to Dr Amy Mathers, who moderated and spoke at a session on whole genome sequencing and also the issue of plasmid-mediated outbreaks. World-reknowned for her work on drains and sinks at the University of Virginia (see http://uvasinklab.org/ ), here are just a couple of the research outputs.   Intensive Care Unit Wastewater Inte...

In this episode from the 2021 ICPIC Conference, Martin Kiernan talks to John McConnell, Editor-in-Chief of the Lancet Infectious Diseases about his keynote yesterday about the impact (and vice-versa) of the COVID pandemic on publishing both in peer-reviewed journals and in pre-print forms. An enormous increase in the number of submissions and diversification in countries submitting are amongst the...

In this special episode, Martin Kiernan talks to the ICPIC 2021 Conference organisers, Profs Didier Pittet and Stephan Harbarth about the upcoming meeting to be held in Geneva. With over 400 delegates attending in person from all over Europe and further afield, this will be the first major meeting to have a significant face-to-face element since the onset of the COVID pandemic. We discuss COVID sa...

In this episode Brett and Phil discuss improving the quality of air to reduce the risk of infection from airborne pathogens with Professor Jason Monty. We discuss air cleaner and purifiers, their role, what to consider when purchasing and practical considerations for their use. Prof Monty is Head of Department and a Professor with the Fluid Mechanics Group in the Department of Mechanical Engineeri...

In this episode Brett Mitchell and Martin Kiernan chew the fat over the fact that, despite knowing that it makes up a great proportion of HCAIs globally, progress can be measured in a series of small victories without actually winning the war. We discuss a new systematic review that suggests benefit from meatal cleansing with antiseptics ( https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8190044/pdf/b...

In this week's episode, Martin Kiernan talks to WHO Consultant Claire Kilpatrick and Martin Shovel, a writer, satirical cartoonist and communications coach who runs Creativityworks, an organisation that offers training and workshops in the art of communication ( https://creativityworks.net/ ). We look at words and they way that they make people feel. Cold words (like 'compliance') are a huge turn-...

In this week's episode Brett MItchell and Martin Kiernan talk to Julie Storr. Julie is a consultant to the World Health Organisation who originally started her infection prevention career in Oxford in the UK. We hear how Julie was motivated by patient stories of isolation and virtual imprisonment in elderly care settings to try and bring compassion into play, supported by sound infection preventio...

In this Q&A style podcast, listeners to our podcast were offered the opportunity to pose COVID-19 related questions to a panel. Our panel included Prof Kirsty Buising, Liz Orr and A/Prof Caroline Marshall. All three panelists have been involved in the COVID-19 response in their organisations. A range of topics were discussed, including aerosol-generating behaviours, ventilation, PPE, vaccination,...

In this episode we discuss a paper published in the Lancet which compares the effectiveness and costs of 7-day versus 4-day infusion set replacement to prevent CRBSI with lead author Professor Claire Rickard. Professor Rickard is a Professor of Infection Prevention & Vascular Access at the University of Queensland. Claire established the Alliance for Vascular Access Teaching and Research (AVATAR)...

In this week's episode, Prof Brett Mitchell talks to Daniela Karanfilovska. Daniela is an infection prevention nurse at Alfred Health in Melbourne. She led a paper published recently in the Journal of Hospital Infection in which a Delphi method was used to create an assessment tool that can be used to assess the preventability of healthcare-associated bloodstream infections caused by Staphylococcu...

This week, Brett Mitchell and Martin Kiernan are joined by Dr Kirsty Buising, infectious diseases physician at the Royal Melbourne Hospital who is also Deputy Director of the National Centre for Antimicrobial Stewardship and chief investigator for the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) funded Centre for Research Excellence in Antimicrobial Stewardship in the Doherty Institute at...

In this episode, Martin Kiernan and Brett Mitchell talk to Paul Webber in the 20th year of the Webber Teleclass series that remains free for all in low-income countries. Originally envisaged by his friend and mentor Dr Syed Sattar as being a short series for an Canadian audience, there have now been in excess of 750 editions with episode audiences sometimes numbering in the tens of thousands. The...

In this episode, Martin is jouned by Dr Luke Moore (@dr_luke_moore), Consultant in Infectious Diseases, Clinical Microbiology and Virology at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust in the UK and Honorary Clinical Senior Lecturer at Imperial College London. We discuss the recent paper from his group ( https://bmcinfectdis.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12879-021-06159-8 ), the findings o...

In this podcast, we discuss an article just published in Clinical Infectious Disease which reports data from 134 hospitals on mortality, length of stay and costs of common infections. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32822465/