What’s Lurking in the Sink? Rethinking Water as an Infection Risk in Health Care

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Nurses play a primary role in patient safety through direct care and through the environments in which care is delivered. While clinical responsibilities are well defined, the nurses’ role in promoting a health care environment that prevents health care–associated infections (HAIs) is not always clear.

A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that U.S. hospitals saw meaningful declines in several major HAIs in 2024, including Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), central line–associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteremia. Despite the obvious progress, each day, approximately one in 31 hospitalized patients and one in 43 nursing home residents contract at least one HAI in association with their health care. This alarming statistic underscores the need for frontline vigilance by nurses in every clinical setting.

When the Environment Works Against Us

Infection prevention is often framed around what we can see—dirty floors and high-touch surfaces, visibly soiled equipment, and stained linens. Some of the most consequential risks in health care are not visible. One emerging area of concern is the role of health care water systems as reservoirs for pathogens. Surprisingly, it’s not dirty water that’s being scrutinized, but […]

2026-04-08T10:03:07-04:00April 8th, 2026|infection control, Nursing|0 Comments
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When Nurses Mobilize: “Professional” Degree Programs

ANA grassroots advocacy manager Katherine Rowe

Few moments in recent history demonstrate the power of nurses as clearly as the fight over the definition of “professional” degree programs. Hundreds of thousands of nurses spoke out against the Department of Education’s proposed definition, loud enough for the issue to gain traction across social media channels and make an impact on Capitol Hill.

How Did We Get There?

We’ve known that the Department of Education (ED) was preparing to scale back support for unsubsidized federal graduate loans; last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) tasked the ED to do so. The question was how. That’s why the American Nurses Association (ANA) pushed for nursing representation on the ED’s Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) Committee and collaborated with partners on strong coalition letters when our calls for including the nurse voice went unheeded.

Despite these efforts, the RISE committee failed to recognize post-baccalaureate nursing programs’ strength and rigor, excluding them from the definition of “professional” degree programs.

Why does this matter? OBBBA eliminated the Grad PLUS Loans program while the RISE committee’s recommendations established two levels of federal student loan limits:

  1. Graduate caps: $20,500 annual / $100,000 total
  2. “Professional” caps: $50,000 annual / $200,000 total

In addition to […]

2026-05-04T09:51:06-04:00March 11th, 2026|Nursing, nursing advocacy, nursing students, Public health|0 Comments
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Multidrug Resistance: A Growing Threat of Carbapenem-Resistant Gram-Negative Organisms in Health Care

Nurses are well aware of the problems with multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs) and their ubiquitous presence across health care settings. Care issues and outcomes among patients with MDROs such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococcus (VRE), and Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) have increased awareness, but MDROs remain a growing challenge in the provision of care in virtually all health care settings.

Carbapenem-resistant Gram-negative bacteria, another example of MDROs, have emerged as one of the most urgent public health challenges globally. Organisms such as carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales (CRE), carbapenem-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (CRPA), and carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAB) are associated with high morbidity, mortality, prolonged hospitalization, and limited treatment options. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii and carbapenem-resistant Enterobacterales are among the highest-priority pathogens due to their rapid spread and severe clinical consequences (WHO, 2024).

Mechanisms of Carbapenem Resistance

Carbapenem resistance develops when bacteria change in ways that allow them to survive despite antibiotic treatment. Nurses and other health care personnel benefit from understanding these mechanisms because they directly relate to infection prevention activities, equipment cleaning and disinfection, and antimicrobial stewardship efforts.

Examples of how resistance develops are outlined below:

  1. Bacteria Produce Enzymes That Break Down the Antibiotic (Carbapenemase production)

Some bacteria create special enzymes that destroy carbapenem antibiotics before they can work. These are called carbapenemases. Common types of these enzymes include KPC (Klebsiella pneumoniae carbapenemase), NDM (New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase), VIM (Verona integron-encoded metallo-beta-lactmase), IMP (Imipenemase metallo-beta-lactamases), and OXA-48 (Oxacillinase-48).  These enzyme abbreviations/names may be familiar, as they have been seen […]

2026-01-05T11:14:29-05:00January 5th, 2026|infectious diseases, Nursing, Public health|0 Comments
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The Rise of Anti-Intellectualism, Snapshot of Nursing in Gaza, Video Monitoring to Reduce Falls: December Issue Recommended Reading

The December issue of AJN is now live.

Some articles in this issue will be open access or free to access for a set period; others will require log-in or subscription. Below are some articles of note we’d like to draw your attention to.

This issue has two original research articles. The first is of these is an observational cohort study looking at implementation of a continuous video monitoring program to decrease falls in a long-term acute care hospital setting. This article is open access.

The second original research article in our December issue is “Investigating the Relationships Among Nurses’ Stress, Sleep Quality, and Mental Health, and the Mediating Role of Coping Strategies and Social Support: A Cross-Sectional Study.” According to the authors, “This study highlights strong associations between stress, sleep quality, anxiety, and depressive symptoms, with coping strategies and social support as potential mediators.”

An integrative review (currently free to read) looks at what we currently know (and don’t know but need to study) about best practices for implementing hospital-based virtual nursing.

Our editorial by editor-in-chief Carl Kirton indulges a little word play in its title, “The Rise of AI.” But the topic […]

2025-11-20T11:34:48-05:00November 20th, 2025|digital health, Nursing, nursing research, Public health, Technology|0 Comments
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Chagas: An Unfamiliar and Emerging Disease

Ms. Stevens is a 32-year-old humanitarian aid worker. She recently returned to the United States after spending a month volunteering in rural Guatemala, where she was assisting with community housing construction. She reports having had multiple insect bites during her stay and occasional insects in her sleeping quarters. Six months after returning to the U.S., she developed intermittent low-grade fevers, malaise, and mild right eyelid swelling.

Chagas disease—also called American trypanosomiasis—is a potentially life‑threatening infection caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi. The parasite is transmitted primarily through contact with an infected “kissing bug.” Transmission occurs when an infected bug feeds at night and defecates near the bite.

The bitten individual scratches or rubs the bite site and enables the parasites to enter the skin, or the eyes if rubbed. Other transmission routes include congenital (mother‑to‑fetus), blood transfusion, organ transplantation, laboratory accidents, and foodborne outbreaks from contaminated juices or foods. Illness has an acute phase that is often mild or asymptomatic and a chronic phase that can manifest decades later with a variety of cardiac and gastrointestinal symptoms.

Global and U.S. epidemiology

WHO map of global Chagas case distribution (based on 2018 […]

2025-11-07T15:01:57-05:00November 7th, 2025|infectious diseases, Nursing, Public health|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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