Becker's Clinical Quality & Infection Control

8 INFECTION CONTROL AG: While the outcomes were not always what everyone would have liked to have had, people have to understand that even with the horrible loss of life, the tremendous morbidity rate associated with the pandemic, U.S. hospitals were phenomenal. Of course, if we had the technology and the vaccines earlier, we could have saved more lives. But no one had the whole picture. ey had to guess what would be the best treatments and the best approach. In that respect, obviously mistakes were made due to lack of knowledge of science but not because of lack of effort or failure to attempt to deal with the situation. at can't be forgotten. Our hospitals rose to the occasion. Science was rapid. Maybe it was nowhere near as quick as people would have liked it to be. But that's the reality. You can't press a button and say: "is is the right answer." It doesn't work like that. It's all trial and error in science. Some of the things that we did at the beginning ultimately turned out to be wrong or even possibly dangerous. But we were grasping at straws to save lives right in front of us. People like to focus on the errors and lack of information or contrary information we had to work with. What came out in January changed in March and then again in April. Why? Because scientific information changes. Q: What do you see as the most significant long-term effects the pandemic has left on healthcare? AG: We've learned so many things. Technology has allowed us to consider different forms of vaccinations, rapid testing — there are so many technological advancements. COVID showed us that we have to look at isolation procedures and how we keep our patients safe from each other to make sure we are providing the best possible care under extremely difficult situations. is will help in preparing for other pandemics. It will prepare us to handle the Ebola concerns, the bird flu concerns — concerns that come up on a regular basis. COVID-19 provided us with a difficult, but very useful, test of our system. We learned we had certain deficiencies in terms of equipment and PPE acquisition, as examples. ese challenges will hopefully allow us to be better prepared for the next pandemic. And it's only a question of when it will come and what it will be — rather than if it will come. n 3 reasons why physicians aren't specializing in infectious diseases By Mariah Taylor T he U.S. is facing a dire shortage of infectious disease specialists and some experts point to a complex web of issues that currently face the specialty as drivers of the shortage, Fox News reported Jan. 25. New physicians are largely dodging the infectious diseases (ID) specialty, with 44 percent of ID programs left unfilled after the latest specialty fellowships Match Day on Nov. 30. Many programs are recruiting applicants who did not match and hoping to attract other residents training in the same university hospitals. The low numbers of ID applicants comes after a record- high number of medical school applications in the last cycle. Experts point to three potential reasons why the infectious disease specialty is no longer appealing: • Infectious disease physicians routinely work longer hours for lower compensations, compared to other medical specialties. "[Infectious disease] is one of the few specialties, if not the only specialty, where you make less after training than before," Carlos del Rio, MD, president of Infectious Diseases Society of America, told Fox News. • Many blame the pandemic for polarizing the specialty and leading to "the potential for personal risk of being harassed or threatened for publicly expressing ID opinions or advice on topics that become politicized," Cindy Whitener, MD, chief of the division of infectious diseases at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey (Pa.) Medical Center, told Fox News. • Some critics argue the infectious disease fellowship programs expanded too rapidly in past years. n 11-year-old boy dies from flesh-eating bacteria after ankle injury, invasive Strep A By Mariah Taylor A n 11-year-old Florida boy died of flesh-eating bacteria after spraining his ankle, NBC affiliate WESH reported Feb. 18. The boy, Jesse, sprained his ankle and possibly cut it on a treadmill. He wore a boot for the injury, which kept it out of view from his family. A couple days later, they went to the ER because his leg was covered in splotchy, purply-red bruising and he had a fever, according to the report. Jesse's parents were told group A strep infected the ankle injury. The strep then turned into flesh-eating bacteria. "[His parents] had to bring him back a couple of times because his heart was doing crazy things. His organs were starting to shut down and they had to intubate him," Megan Brown, Jesse's cousin, told WESH. Jesse died after he developed severe brain swelling. Strep A is on the rise, according to the CDC. It often leads to secondary infections. n

• Cover