Infection Control

One of the other hats of infectious disease is hospital infection control, the study of the epidemiology and prevention of communicable disease in the health-care system. It's one of the often overlooked but incredibly important aspects of hospital medicine. Indeed, this rotation really made me aware of washing my hands before and after seeing each patient since all the patients have an infectious disease. But beyond that, infection control also looks at sterilization, personal protective equipment, isolation of patients, and post-exposure prophylaxis. Especially with the scare of novel H1N1 swine influenza, determining patient isolation and the precautions necessary for health care workers is important. After hours, the ID fellow carries around a needle-stick hotline pager in case someone is stuck by a sharp and needs post-exposure prophylaxis with anti-retrovirals or other medications.

One of the scary historic stories regarding infection control is about "Typhoid Mary" shown above who was a healthy carrier of typhoid fever. Unfortunately, she was a cook and spread infection to 53 people, 3 of whom died. Furthermore, she denied carrying the disease and refused to quit cooking; she was forcibly quarantined by the New York Health Department.

Both images are in the public domain, from Wikipedia.