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Reflections from the front line: why doctors don’t listen to the ‘impending...
Guest blogger and Acute Medicine trainee Dr Nicola Fawcett (bio below) writes…I’ve just returned from the European Conference for Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) in Copenhagen....
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Dispatches: Pan-drug-resistant doom – are we there yet?
Guest blogger and Acute Medicine trainee Dr Nicola Fawcett (bio below) writes…As the local Prophet of Antibiotic Resistance Doomsday to our population of hospital physicians, I’m always interested in...
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What drives carbapenem resistance? Carbapenem use, stupid!
An outstanding study from colleagues at Imperial shows that if you use a bucket-load of meropenem (a carbapenem antibiotic) one year, you see an uptick in carbapenem-resistant Enterobacteriaceae (CRE)...
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Antibiotics and the Netherlands
Antimicrobial resistance, control of antibiotic use and infection control are some of the things the Dutch presumably do well. Some of the Dutch infection control policies, such as “Search &...
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Online antimicrobial stewardship course
I found out about a new free online antimicrobial stewardship course yesterday. The course is a collaboration between the the University of Dundee and the British Society for Antimicrobial...
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What do nurses have to do with anti-infective stewardship?
Nurses are usually non-prescribers, so that means that anti-infective stewardship is the domain of the prescribing doctors and pharmacists, right? Wrong! Nurses have an enormous and enormously...
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ESPAUR 2016: an early Christmas present
I am just getting around to reading (well detail-scanning the exec summary) of the ESPAUR report. My main reflection is what a fantastic resource this reporting stream offers us: to have freely...
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The English C. difficile miracle: is it all about fluoroquinolones?
A new Lancet ID study suggests that restriction of fluoroquinolone usage has been the main driver of the national reduction in C. difficile infection in England. This paper is challenging in terms of...
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The anatomy of a good blog
ICHE recently published an unusual article (which other article has ‘the world wide web’ as their setting) on blogging in ID and clinical micro. The article reviewed around 100 blogs and rated them...
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The antibiotic course has had its day?
In a recent BMJ article, Llewelyn et al. argue that the old dogma of completing a prescribed course of antibiotics to prevent antibiotic-resistance is a myth, not based on evidence. Actually the...
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CPE guidelines galore: ECDC and ACSQH join the party
I recently posted on the WHO CPE guidelines. A couple of people have alerted me to two other recently published guidelines, one from ECDC, and the other from Australian Commission on Safety and...
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Using qualitative methods to understand determinants of antibiotic prescribing
A couple of new studies provide insight into determinants of antibiotic prescribing using qualitative methodology. A systematic review in the Journal of Hospital Infection highlights the tension...
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Can we halve GNBSI? The crowd say no…!
I participated in another pro-con debate recently up against fellow Reflections blogger Martin Kiernan during a Webber Teleclass. The question for the debate was “Can we halve Gram-negative BSI?” (I...
View ArticleSetting our IPC priorities for the next 3-5 years
In honour of Infection Prevention and Control Week (#IIPW) 2021, I thought I put up a quick post based on a talk I did on Friday last week about the ‘Future of Healthcare and of Infection Prevention...
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