Outbreak Investigation, Prevention, and Control in Health Care Settings: Critical Issues in Patient Safety

Healthcare facilities play an integral role in interrupting the transmission of infectious agents and recognizing, preventing, and controlling outbreaks caused by infectious and noninfectious agents.

This comprehensive resource offers practical guidance for the future or practicing health care professional who must be prepared to recognize and investigate outbreaks and identify effective interventions that can be used to interrupt and prevent outbreaks.

With hundreds of references and examples of actual outbreaks, this is an ideal resource for infection prevention and control professionals, hospital epidemiologists, clinical laboratory scientists and health care quality management personnel. The Second Edition is a thorough revision that offers the most up-to-date information, examples, tables, statistics, and readings.

Features:

• Explains epidemiologic principles as they apply to the health care setting.
• Serves as a reference for published reports pertaining to the identification, investigation, prevention, and control of outbreaks in a variety of settings.
• Presents practical guidelines for identifying, investigating, preventing, and controlling outbreaks caused by either infectious of noninfectious agents.
• Discusses the use of information technology in infection surveillance, prevention and control programs.
• Is accompanied by a complete set of appendices with guidelines, recommendations, and case definitions.

Table of Contents

Preface   
Contributor List  
Chapter  1 An Introduction to Epidemiology  
Chapter  2 Surveillance Programs, Public Health, and Emergency Preparedness  
Chapter  3 Outbreaks Reported in Acute Care Settings  
Chapter  4 Outbreaks Reported in Long-Term Care Settings  
Chapter  5 Outbreaks Reported in Ambulatory Care Settings  
Chapter  6 Pseudo-Outbreaks Reported in Health Care Settings  
Chapter  7 Organisms and Diseases Associated with Outbreaks in a Variety of Health Care Settings  
Chapter  8 Investigation, Prevention and Control of Outbreaks in the Health Care Setting  
Chapter  9 Information Technology and Outbreak Investigation  
Chapter  10 Statistical Methods Used in Outbreak Investigations  
Chapter  11 The Role of the Laboratory in Outbreak Detection, Prevention and Investigation  
Chapter  12 Collecting, Organizing and Displaying Epidemiologic Data  
Glossary