infectious diseases Archives - Page 15 of 20

Zika Virus Update: Epidemiology, Sexual Transmission, Pregnancy

By Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, CIC, clinical editor

Mosquito repellant being sprayed on a person’s hand in Brazil. EPA

Zika virus is now being actively transmitted in 42 countries, primarily in the Americas and on islands in the South Pacific. As of April 13th, there had been 358 travel-associated cases reported in the U.S., including 31 pregnant women.

While there are as yet no locally acquired U.S. cases, local transmission has been established in several U.S. territories (primarily, Puerto Rico). Travel-associated cases are expected to continue in the U.S., almost certainly leading to eventual limited local transmission.

Transmission. Most cases of Zika virus infection have been vector-borne—that is, they resulted from the bite of an infected mosquito. Other […]

Betsy Todd, MPH, RN2016-11-21T13:01:17-05:00April 20th, 2016|infectious diseases, Nursing, Public health|11 Comments

What to Know About Zika Virus

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief. Accompanying map via PAHO/WHO.

The media is full of headlines and photos about the recent increase in the number of Brazilian children born with microcephaly, thought to be due to maternal exposure to the Zika virus. If you’re like most nurses, you’ve had family members and friends asking you about it, especially if they’re considering a winter escape to the Caribbean or Mexico. Here are some resources and information to help you stay up to date so you can provide your patients (and families and neighbors) with evidence-based information.

Zika basics. Zika virus was first discovered in 1947 in monkeys in the Zika forest of Uganda and the first documented case in humans was in 1952. An outbreak on Yap Island in Micronesia in 2007 showed that it had spread beyond Africa. The virus is spread by the Aedes mosquito, the same mosquito that transmits yellow fever, dengue, and chikungunya.

Outbreaks of Zika have been spreading northward from Brazil through the Americas since 2014. (See above PAHO/WHO map of confirmed cases, 2015-2016.) While most transmission is believed to occur via mosquito bites, according to the CDC, “Perinatal, in utero, and possible sexual and transfusion transmission events have also been reported. Zika virus RNA has been identified in asymptomatic blood donors during an ongoing outbreak.”

Symptoms and course are similar to those of other […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:01:31-05:00January 26th, 2016|infectious diseases, nursing perspective|0 Comments

Nurses and Latent TB Infection

By Betsy Todd, AJN clinical editor, MPH, RN, CIC

Mantoux skin test/CDC PHIL

Are you “PPD positive”?

In December, a California maternity nurse was diagnosed with active tuberculosis. More than 1,000 people, including 350 infants, may have been exposed. In infants, tuberculosis can be hard to diagnose and is more likely than in newly infected adults to progress to active disease and to disseminate to extrapulmonary sites. Therefore, a course of isoniazid was recommended for each of these exposed infants, as well as for any parents, visitors, or staff who tested positive after the exposure.

Some of the details of this incident weren’t released to the media. In my experience, active infection in a health care worker who has not recently traveled to a TB-endemic area is almost always the result of reactivated latent infection. That was the case in a similar exposure more than 10 years ago, when a New York City maternity nurse exposed more than 1,500 infants and adults to active tuberculosis.

And in three of the largest TB exposure investigations on which I’ve worked, the index cases were nurses in oncology, transplant, and the ED whose latent tuberculosis infection progressed to active infection. In these three cases, neither the RNs nor their own primary care providers connected their persistent febrile respiratory infections with their […]

Betsy Todd, MPH, RN2016-11-21T13:01:33-05:00January 18th, 2016|infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments

Inside an Ebola Treatment Unit: A Nurse Shares Her Experiences in Liberia

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

“It is extraordinarily difficult to establish an IV line in a dehydrated patient by generator-powered light while double gloved, with one’s goggles fogging.”—Deborah Wilson

In one of this month’s CE features, “Inside an Ebola Treatment Unit: A Nurse’s Report,” author Deborah Wilson offers readers a rare look from the frontlines of the 2014 Ebola epidemic. Her stories about her patients and colleagues are as compelling as they are informative. Here’s a short overview of the article:

In December 2013, the first cases of the most recent outbreak of Ebola virus disease (EVD; formerly known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever) emerged in the West African nation of Guinea. Within months the disease had spread to the neighboring countries of Liberia and Sierra Leone. The international humanitarian aid organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF; known in English as Doctors Without Borders) soon responded by sending staff to set up treatment centers and outreach triage teams in all three countries. In August 2014, the World Health Organization declared the outbreak an international public health emergency.

In September 2014, the author was sent by MSF to work as a nurse in an Ebola treatment unit in Foya, Liberia for five weeks. This article describes her experiences […]

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Guest Author2017-07-27T14:39:21-04:00December 11th, 2015|infectious diseases, narratives, nursing perspective|4 Comments

AJN in December: Inside an Ebola Unit, Acupressure, Early Mobility, EHRs, More

AJN1215.Cover.Online On this month’s cover, nurse Elie Kasindi Kabululu cares for a patient at Centre Médical Evangélique in Nyankunde, Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo. Originally, this location served a population of 150,000 and also housed a nursing school; but in 2002, during war in the region, the facility was attacked. About 1,000 people were killed—including patients and staff—and the center was looted and destroyed.

Providing medical assistance in the world’s war-torn and neediest areas is commonplace for health care providers like Kabululu, just as it is for humanitarian organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which works in 70 countries worldwide—nearly half of these in Africa. Shortly after the recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, MSF sent close to 300 international workers to help combat this public health emergency. To read one nurse’s experience traveling to Liberia for MSF to work in a treatment center, see “Inside an Ebola Treatment Unit: A Nurse’s Report.”

Some other articles of note in the December issue:

Original Research: “Implementation of an Early Mobility Program in an ICU.” This article, from our Cultivating Quality column, recounts how the effects of an early mobilization program delivered to critically ill patients at a community hospital by an independent ICU mobility team contributed to fewer delirium days and improvements in patient outcomes, sedation levels, and functional status.

CE Feature: “Incorporating Acupressure into Nursing Practice.” The effects of acupressure can’t always be explained in terms of Western anatomical […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:01:42-05:00November 30th, 2015|infectious diseases|0 Comments