Developing Strategies to Address Different Threats in Health Care Settings

Michael Edmond, MD, MPH, MPA, chief quality officer at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, explains how strategies are developed to address different threats in health care settings.

Interview Transcript (modified slightly for readability):

“The strategies that we develop in response to the threats that are in front of us will be slightly different depending on the pathogen. And a lot of that will depend, particularly for those of us who work in hospital infection prevention, on the mechanism of transmission of the disease. Is this a disease that’s spread by contact? Is it a disease that is spread by the airborne route, or perhaps droplets, or in some cases, maybe even all of those? And so, depending on what the pathogen is and the mechanism of its transmission, that will dictate what we need to do in terms of controlling it inside of the hospital.”