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Beat the bug: Simple steps to flummox flu

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, February 10, 2006

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It may be only a matter of time before you battle an influenza outbreak at your hospital, and preparedness is the key to curbing any infectious outbreak. The following are five tips from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for handling influenza:

Tip #1: Educate workers about the risks. A sick hospital employee is a threat to other staff and patients, says Cliff McDonald, spokesperson for the epidemiology and laboratory branch of the CDC. The flu is often misleading because someone might be infectious to others before any symptoms appear.

Standard precautions (e.g., using tissues, covering coughs, using masks when necessary, and washing your hands before entering and after leaving a room) should be automatic for hospital workers during peak flu seasons. Changing the attitudes of workers who come to work even when they're sick is also important.

Tip #2: Track the progress of infections in-house. Hospitals should have a system in place to monitor whether infections enter the facility, at what rate, and from which demographics. The system should also track which staff come in contact with infected patients and how fast cases increase internally. Internal and external communication is critical for tracking infections because staff need to stay informed about what's happening, as do people in the community.

To learn three more tips from the CDC, go to Respiratory Care Manager (RCM). The cost is just $10. For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire February issue of RCM. Click here to choose between the PDF and HTML versions for just $30. Subscribers to the online version of RCM have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter can find this article in their February issue.

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