Infection control reminders still necessary

Lessons learned from the threat of bioterrorism include valuable techniques for office-based physicians.

By Susan J. Landers, AMNews staff. March 18, 2002.

Washington -- When Craig Smith, MD, gives a talk on infectious diseases he likes to show a slide from a 1988 medical textbook that dismisses infectious diseases as a worry of the past.

It usually gets a chuckle from his audience. They know that Mother Nature has thrown a few curveballs, said Dr. Smith, an infectious disease specialist and a spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. "She is always changing something," he said.

A case in point is the rise in antibiotic-resistant infections and the many warnings to physicians to judiciously prescribe antibiotics and guidance to patients to take them correctly.

And what Mother Nature hasn't had a hand in, humans have. Last fall's terrorist attacks revived a threat of smallpox -- one deadly disease thought to have been defeated by medicine.

The infection-control reminders from this experience remain of value, and all physicians and their staffs -- nurses, physician assistants and receptionists -- should remember the protective measures revisited after fears about anthrax-laden mail.

For example, many of the pointers developed by the California Medical Assn. for office-based physicians in the days immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, can be employed for controlling the spread of the flu, hepatitis B, or any of the diseases that are becoming resistant to treatment with conventional antibiotics.

Among the tips: Educate your office staff on what is contagious and what is not; keep local public health authority phone numbers in several places in your suite; and, as vaccines become available, obtain them for yourself and your staff. [...]