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15 INFECTION CONTROL & PATIENT SAFETY Viewpoint: Mainstream media reports on disease outbreaks lack crucial information By Harrison Cook H ealth organizations are obligated to contribute accurate and timely information to the general public, but the bulk of this information comes from social media and does not help people make informed health decisions, wrote Yotam Ophir, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg School of Communication in Philadelphia, in an op-ed for Science Alert. Here are five things to know: 1. For a study, Dr. Ophir analyzed 5,006 news articles on swine flu, Ebola and Zika virus published by news outlets such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal over the last 10 years. He sought to assess coverage patterns among infectious disease news reports. 2. The analysis identified three common elements among the news coverage: • Scientific information, which focused on health risks and medical facts • Social stories, which outlined an outbreak's effect on markets, politics and cultural events • Pandemic coverage, which highlighted efforts to pre- vent disease outbreaks from spreading to the U.S. 3. Dr. Ophir found about half of the coverage ex- plored the social consequences of diseases, "such as their effect on the economy, politicians or athletes." 4. He also found 1 in 5 articles included preventative steps to avoid infection. Most of these fell under the scientific article category. About 1 in 8 pandemic arti- cles included preventative steps. None of the 120 social articles included practical health-related information. "The fact that different articles focus on different aspects is not problematic by itself. People could still collect bits of information from different sources," Dr. Ophir wrote. "But no matter which articles people read, there was a good chance for them to miss some important information." 5. The author urges health organizations like the CDC to supplement information gaps in mainstream media articles with additional information on ways Ameri- cans can protect themselves and their health during an infectious disease outbreak. n Hospital staff racks up infection control errors in pathogen transmission study By Megan Knowles A study of 325 patient rooms found hospital staff fre- quently failed to take proper precautions to prevent the spread of infections. The study, published in JAMA Internal Medicine, involved direct observation inside and outside patient rooms in clinical units from March to November 2016. The observations took place in the medical and/or surgical units and intensive care units at an academic medical center and a Veterans Affairs hospital, as well as the emergency de- partment of the university hospital. Trained observers made field notes while hospital staff cared for patients in precautions for a pathogen transmitted through contact, such as Clostridium difficile and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. In the 325 room observations conducted at two sites, the researchers found 283 failures, including 102 violations (deviations from safe operating practices or procedures), 144 process or procedural mis- takes (failures of intention) and 37 slips (failures of execution). Violations included staff going into rooms without some or all rec- ommended personal protective equipment. e researchers found mistakes frequently occurred during personal protective equipment removal and encounters with challenging situations, including badge-enforced computer logins. Slips included staff touching their face or clean areas with contaminated gloves or gowns. e failures have significant potential to result in self-contamina- tion, and the circumstances around these failures in precaution practices varied across and within the different failure types, the researchers said. "Active failures in personal protective equipment use and transmis- sion-based precautions, potentially leading to self-contamination, were commonly observed," the researchers wrote. "e factors that contributed to these failures varied widely, suggesting the need for a range of strategies to reduce potential transmission risk during routine hospital care." n