This anonymous survey of hospitalists and acute care nurses evaluated awareness of peripheral intravenous catheters (PIVC) presence and decision-making regarding PIVC insertion, maintenance, and removal. Nurses were most aware of PIVC presence and regarded as best to make decisions about PIVC, yet <50% of respondents felt nurses should remove PIVC without an order.

Forearms and hands of 100 staff from five nursing homes were sampled on breakroom entry or end-of-shift. Twenty (20%) were multidrug-resistant organism (MDRO)-positive (90% methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). Recent high contact resident-care activities were associated with contamination (OR = 9.1 (1.1–74.2), P = .04). Enhanced barrier precautions and hand hygiene are important to prevent staff MDRO acquisition.

Asymptomatic bacteriuria (ASB) frequently results in inappropriate antimicrobial use. Urinalysis (UA)-driven reflex urine culture order sets can reduce inappropriate urine cultures. Most special indications on free text overrides within a (UA)-driven reflex culture protocol were inappropriately defined and rarely symptom-based. Eliminating the “other” indication could strengthen diagnostic stewardship and reduce unnecessary urine cultures.

In Denver area census tracts during the years 2016–2019, the rate of carbapenem-resistant enterobacterales (CRE) infection increased by 10% for every 0.1 unit increase in Social Vulnerability Index (RR 1.10, 95% CI 1.06, 1.14). This finding suggests that community factors may influence risk of healthcare-associated infections such as CRE.

We evaluated changes in population attributable risk of “4C” antibiotics for community-associated Clostridioides difficile infection in Ontario (2017–2024). Contributions from clindamycin, cephalosporins, and fluoroquinolones declined, whereas amoxicillin-clavulanate increased and became the leading contributor by 2022, highlighting a potential emerging target for outpatient antimicrobial stewardship.

In this post hoc analysis of a quasi-experimental pilot/feasibility trial, a bundled diagnostic stewardship intervention safely reduced respiratory culturing rates without increasing ventilator-associated events (VAEs). Using difference-in-differences methodology, we observed a significant reduction in possible ventilator-associated pneumonia (PVAP) events, suggesting the intervention may reduce pneumonia overdiagnosis without compromising patient safety.

We used a large language model integrated in the electronic health record to evaluate unnecessary central lines. It had a 16% sensitivity and 99% specificity for detecting unnecessary lines. Although it missed many unnecessary lines, the high specificity suggests potential as a tool where human review is not feasible.

The clinical outcomes associated with using commercial versus open ISDTs (initial specimen diverting techniques) remain unclear. This multicenter study showed that switching from the commercial to open ISDT did not change blood culture contamination rates, length of stay, or days of therapy with antibiotics, but did reduce laboratory-associated costs.

National Healthcare Safety Network developed a hospital-onset bacteremia (HOB) reporting module which may be used for Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)-reimbursement in the future. This retrospective study compared CMS-reported, HOB, and Overlap events. There were twice as many HOB as CMS events, but >40% of HOB were due to infections that lack defined infection prevention practices.

An outbreak of emm92/ST82 Streptococcus pyogenes was detected through prospective genomic surveillance at a military treatment facility. Twenty-one of twenty-six patients had confirmed epidemiological links to grappling sports. One case resulted from household transmission. The benefits of routine surveillance extend beyond the hospital environment enabling the detection of community-driven transmission.

Our study evaluated a large language model (gpt-4o-mini) for surgical site infection (SSI) adjudication, achieving 100% sensitivity but 69.4% specificity. While reducing the manual screening workload by 66%, the agent generated many false positives, underscoring the need for refined models to improve specificity without compromising accuracy.

In this single-center, retrospective cohort study of 1169 patients requiring outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy, complications (i.e., bloodstream infections or venous thrombosis) occurred more frequently in patients with midlines (6.4 per 1,000 line-days) than peripherally inserted central catheters (1.1 per 1,000 line-days), adjusted hazard ratio 3.60 (95% confidence interval 1.66–7.81).

Blood culture contamination (BCC) leads to increased costs and patient harms. We reviewed 525 BCC cases and found 71.2% of BCC cases were ordered for indications with low risk for bacteremia and most received unnecessary tests and antibiotics. Diagnostic stewardship of blood cultures may reduce BCC and its associated costs.

We evaluated Clostridioides difficile admission screening in a cancer unit. Admission screening was associated with a non-significant decrease in hospital-onset C. difficile infection (CDI) incidence and a significant decrease in community-onset CDI incidence, which may reflect, in part, the artifactual impact of screening on subsequent provider testing behavior.

We assessed the accuracy of a large language model (LLM) for clinical decision support for central line–associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI) identification. Comparing LLM-assisted to manual review, the LLM could efficiently identify CLABSI and secondary BSIs with high sensitivity and specificity. Infection preventionists reported high satisfaction with the tool.

The Ethical Infection Prevention and Control (EIPAC) framework was introduced in 2024. In this binational survey assessing uptake, 12.3% of respondents working in IPAC report using the framework in a variety of complex situations. Lack of awareness regarding existence of EIPAC framework was most common barrier to adopting in practice.

Healthcare personnel (HCP) are at risk for occupational exposure to tuberculosis. Current guidelines for managing exposed HCP are broad and resource intensive. Based on review of our internal data, we propose a risk-based stratification approach to streamline exposure follow-up testing and optimize resource utilization.

Replacing soiled bed linens is a common practice in intensive care units . We identified dust-driven transmission of carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii correlated with changing bed linens by air sampling and genome-based analysis. This uncovers a hidden airborne route, which needs to be considered to design countermeasures against multidrug-resistant organisms.