Category Archives: Multi Drug Resistant

Contagion Live

We’ve all seen the statistics—each year in the United States, 2 million people will get an antibiotic-resistant infection and at least 23,000 will die as a result of them. Moreover, multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) represent an increasing threat to global health as it’s estimated that their mortality rates will exceed those of cancer by 2050. It’s easy to see such data and focus on how to cut down the rates or how to increase antimicrobial stewardship without thinking about the perceptions or emotional impact of these infections.

How do health care workers experience MDROs? What about patients? These types of questions are rarely discussed in infection prevention or antimicrobial resistance efforts but, nonetheless, play a critical role. A new study from a research team in Germany sought to truly understand how these perceptions affect efforts such as hand hygiene, disinfection, and isolation. We all too often focus on the isolation and rapid identification of patients with MDROs but rarely discuss the social and psychological implications of such infections.

Investigators used a socio-constructivist focus and a mixed-method approach to conduct the study, which was broken into sections that included discussions, peer-assisted objective-structured clinical examination, and constructive efforts like card surveys and papers. Topics included infectious diseases and microbiology, basic hygiene procedures, communication techniques, and special protective hazardous material equipment. The research team had 51 health care workers from 13 professions across 5 hospitals participate in this training and data collection. Overall, they found that there are significant barriers both in educating clinicians and then informing patients and family members, and also in handling emotional responses in patients diagnosed and isolated with an MDRO infection.