Infectious Disease Training
Rhizopus, scotch tape prep
Clinical Infectious Diseases (ongoing, 1 month total required in one year program): Fellows will be closely integrated with the Infectious Diseases Division by providing consultative activity to infectious disease clinicians, coordinating with them to optimize patient testing, and teaching their fellows. Fellows will attend conferences organized by the ID department. Fellows who do not have significant prior relevant clinical training will be expected to spend several months attending afternoon infectious disease patient rounds to become more familiar with clinical care issues. Infectious disease fellows may satisfy the one month requirement through more integrated experience within the infectious disease service where particular attention will be paid on integration of their medical microbiology skill set and extensive follow up of all clinical issues from a microbiology-based perspective.
Infection Control/Epidemiology (approximately 0.5 months): Fellows will learn the techniques used by hospital infection control including analysis of data through retrospective, prospective, case-control and cohort studies. They will participate in infection control work groups as appropriate. They will learn the mechanics of the infection control program, recommendations for patient isolation, the role of microbiology data in isolation decisions, the role of surveillance in control of nosocomial infections, techniques of outbreak investigation, the action and role of disinfection and antiseptics in a hospital setting, and the interaction of infection control/hospital epidemiology and the microbiology laboratory with the department of public health (with its associated reporting requirements).
During these activities, they will learn to use computer programs to interrogate our clinical databases to identify trends in sentinel organism detection and antimicrobial resistance patterns (e.g. MRSA rates). At the present, we use a Microsoft Access database that can also be interrogated by the WHONET program available from the World Health Organization; other avenues of data mining will also be used as we migrate to a new laboratory information system with an embedded epidemiology program. Fellows will also learn the principles of pulsed-field electrophoresis techniques used at BIDMC for the investigation of the clonality of a potential bacterial outbreak and more recently NGS-based genomic analysis, and learn the potential use of alternative methods for examination of outbreaks. Fellows will complete the IDSA/SHEA (Infectious Disease Society of America/ Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America) Infection Control Fellows’ Course.
Anti-Infectives Subcommittee (ongoing). Fellows will serve on the anti-infective subcommittee of the hospital’s P&T committee. We use this committee as a forum to discuss appropriate use and reporting of antibiotic data in patient reports at BIDMC, both in terms of effectiveness and cost.
Infection Control/Epidemiology (approximately 0.5 months): Fellows will learn the techniques used by hospital infection control including analysis of data through retrospective, prospective, case-control and cohort studies. They will participate in infection control work groups as appropriate. They will learn the mechanics of the infection control program, recommendations for patient isolation, the role of microbiology data in isolation decisions, the role of surveillance in control of nosocomial infections, techniques of outbreak investigation, the action and role of disinfection and antiseptics in a hospital setting, and the interaction of infection control/hospital epidemiology and the microbiology laboratory with the department of public health (with its associated reporting requirements).
During these activities, they will learn to use computer programs to interrogate our clinical databases to identify trends in sentinel organism detection and antimicrobial resistance patterns (e.g. MRSA rates). At the present, we use a Microsoft Access database that can also be interrogated by the WHONET program available from the World Health Organization; other avenues of data mining will also be used as we migrate to a new laboratory information system with an embedded epidemiology program. Fellows will also learn the principles of pulsed-field electrophoresis techniques used at BIDMC for the investigation of the clonality of a potential bacterial outbreak and more recently NGS-based genomic analysis, and learn the potential use of alternative methods for examination of outbreaks. Fellows will complete the IDSA/SHEA (Infectious Disease Society of America/ Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America) Infection Control Fellows’ Course.
Anti-Infectives Subcommittee (ongoing). Fellows will serve on the anti-infective subcommittee of the hospital’s P&T committee. We use this committee as a forum to discuss appropriate use and reporting of antibiotic data in patient reports at BIDMC, both in terms of effectiveness and cost.