HR and Employment Law News
Category
Topic
Free Special Reports
Get Your FREE HR Management Special Report. Download Any One Of These FREE Special Reports, Instantly!
Featured Special Report
Claim Your Free Copy of
Top 10 Best Practices in HR Management
HR professionals have the opportunity to play a more strategic role in the business by keeping up to date with the latest HR innovations--technological, legal, and otherwise. This special report will discuss how HR managers can anticipate and address some of the most challenging HR issues this year.
Topics in this special report include:
- Healthcare in 2012
- FMLA Paid Leave Initiatives
- Ethics
- Social Media
- Environmental Responsibility
- Workplace Wellness
- Classifying Employees
- Retirement of Baby Boomers
- Identity Theft
- Communications
Make sure you have the information you need to know about these current HR challenges and how to most effectively manage them in your workplace.
Download Now!
March 28, 2002
Attention Turning to Hospital Infections
TheFor a Limited Time receive a
FREE HR Report "Top 10 Best Practices in HR Management." This comprehensive special report will give you the information you need to know about these current HR challenges and how to most effectively manage them in your workplace.
Download Now
The crisis has grown so severe that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a 12-point manifesto this week designed to slow the rate of hospital-acquired infections, the Boston Globe reports.
The campaign comes at a time when bacteria are proving ever more able to outwit even the most potent antibiotics, according to the Globe.
The recommendations range from reducing the number of tubes inserted into patients' bodies to simply admonishing health workers to more thoroughly wash their hands.
"It's time the hospitals realized there are some very simple, commonplace things that they can do to control and get rid of this problem," said one woman who has recovered from her infection.
In Massachusetts, the Globe reports, the battle has already been joined by physicians and researchers from the intensive care units of large hospitals to the labs of Harvard Medical School, all mindful that time is not on their side in the war against bacteria.
"It's a constant race," said Dr. Richard Brown, chief of infectious disease at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, explaining that bacteria evolve over time to resist drugs that used to kill them. "It's like going back to 1920 when there were no antibiotics at all."
Bacteria exist everywhere. They can hitch a ride into a hospital on a get-well plant, or on a piece of lettuce, the Globe reports. And other microscopic bugs dwell in patients' noses, ready to infect other patients.
"Even the very best we can do in infection control isn't enough to keep these organisms under wraps," said Dr. Robert C. Moellering Jr., physician in chief at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and a specialist in infectious disease. "You can't sterilize everybody's nose every day."
Specialists express alarm at the departure of some major drug companies from the quest to develop new antibiotics. Most notably, Eli Lilly & Co. has "significantly reduced" its antibiotic research, said company spokesman Edward Sagebiel. The company has chosen instead to concentrate on developing antivirals.
The shift away from antibiotic research by some big drug companies is attributed partially to more rigorous testing requirements imposed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, making antibiotic development more expensive.
But a leading specialist in antibiotic resistance believes some pharmaceutical companies prefer to invest their time - and money - developing drugs to treat chronic illnesses.
"You have companies that have a history of antibiotic research leaving it because they are looking for more sustained profits in other areas, and the public is going to suffer," said Tufts microbiologist Stuart Levy.
To read the Globe article, click here.
Participate in this week's HR.BLR.com poll and discussion!