In this episode, Martin spoke to the authors of two compelling posters showcased at the 2025 Infection Prevention Society Conference in Brighton, each discussing practical, data-driven approaches to reducing avoidable harm. Download the posters and have a listen to two authors with a passion for their projects.

First, Catherine Lemsalu, a Dental Nurse from the IPC Team at University Hospital Plymouth discusses her quality-improvement work on an acute stroke ward, demonstrating how structured mouth-care assessment, targeted staff education, and consistent daily oral care contributed to reductions in non-ventilated hospital-acquired pneumonia and Clostridioides difficile infections. Her poster highlights how simple, early interventions—done well—can strengthen antimicrobial stewardship, improve patient outcomes, and build ward-level capability through mouth-care champions.

We then explored the development of a national surveillance framework and digital tool for vascular access device–related bloodstream infections (VAD-BSI) with Sue Rowlands from The Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust. Their multidisciplinary initiative has created a standardised, user-friendly approach to classifying VAD-BSI, identifying risk factors, and generating automated visual outputs that support local reporting, audit, and education. Early pilot data show strong usability, enhanced insight into bloodstream infection epidemiology, and meaningful impact on line-care practice.

Posters can be downloaded here:

Reduction of hospital-acquired pneumonia and Clostridioides difficile infections through focused line care

Developing a surveillance framework and digital tool for Vascular Access Device-Related Bloodstream Infections (VAD-BSI): improving patient safety through local data and national insight

In this episode, Brett and Martin discuss a few posters that interested them from recent major infection prevention conferences.

Martin was on his travels as well and recorded a few discussions with poster presenters at the 2025 Infection Prevention Society conference at Brighton in the south of the UK (more in the next episode). On this occasion he spoke to Frances Butson from the IPC Team at Gloucester Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in the UK. We discussed a new approach to providing the hospital board with assurance of best practice by having 'bottom-up' local assessments rather than using a more traditional IPC team approach. Additionally, to foster better communications in the organisation the team there have a local podcast called IPC In Action, which can be found here: https://shows.acast.com/ipc-in-action-podcast and also on Youtube etc.

The poster can be found here: 

In this episode, Martin Kiernan hosts a panel discussion at the 2026 Infection Prevention Society Conference in Brighton, United Kingdom.

The Panel comprised:

Topics we discuss include:

In this podcast, Brett and Phil have a chat with Professor David Weber on the sidelines of the ICPIC conference in Geneva. We chat about the funding cuts for the WHO and the US CDC, including the disbandment of HICPAC - and what this means for IPC. We discuss what is being done and what needs to happen to fill the void and to ensure contemporary IPC evidence and guidelines are available.

Prof Weber, a distinguished leader in infection prevention and healthcare epidemiology, is the current President of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA). Prof Weber has also held many leadership and committee roles, including with HICPAC.

In this episode Martin talks to Squadron Leader Tez Cooling and Flight Lieutenant Emma Foley about their work in the Royal Air Force (RAF) retrieval service for patients with known and suspected High Consequence Infectious Disease who are transferred to specialist units in the UK.

The team discuss how the Air Transportable Isolator (ATI) is used in order to safely carry out repatriations in a timely manner and the training that is required to operate suct a specialist service.

In this 2-segment episode, Brett, Phil and Martin firstly mull over a nurse-led, bottom up (pun intended) quality improvement project that aimed to reduce CAUTI in a neonatal ICU in Georgia, USA. Having discussed how great it is to see this type of work written up, Martin then spoke to Katie Cabral the lead author for more insights and to find out if the innovation has been sustained.

Cabral K, Anderson V, Allen I, Hoskins D, Byers K, Gettis M. Entering a No Diaper Zone: Rethinking Prevention of Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection. Critical care nurse 2025;45(4):21-8. https://doi.org/10.4037/ccn2025843 

In this episode, Brett, Phil and Martin discuss a recent paper from Freya Bull and colleagues, who undertook a modelling exercise to determine what factors determine the colonisation process for long and short-term urinary catheters. It turns out that different factors are in play here and that strategies for CAUTI prevention miht be different for each.

You can read the paper here:

Bull F, Tavaddod S, Bommer N, Perry M, Brackley CA, Allen RJ. Different factors control long-term versus short-term outcomes for bacterial colonisation of a urinary catheter. Nat Commun 2025;16(1):3940. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-59161-y. 

Brett's group's previous work on short-term catheters is here:

Fasugba O, Cheng AC, Gregory V, Graves N, Koerner J, Collignon P, et al. Chlorhexidine for meatal cleaning in reducing catheter-associated urinary tract infections: a multicentre stepped-wedge randomised controlled trial. Lancet Infect Dis 2019;19(6):611-9. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(18)30736-9. 

In this episode, Martin Kiernan talks to Drs Priya Nori and Gonzalo Bearman. Priya is an Associate Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and Orthopedic Surgery at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, USA. Gonzalo is Chair of the Division of Infectious Diseases and Professor of Internal Medicine and Associate Chief Quality and Safety Officer for Research at the Virginia Commonwealth University Health System, USA.

We chat about a recent book entitled "Courageous Leadership in Infectious Diseases and Public Health During Challenging Times" that they edited, in which they conducted in-depth interviews with luminaries whose careers span multiple aspects of infectious diseases and public health. We discuss the themes, lessons and nuggets gleaned from long and successful careers in Public Health, Infectious Diseases and Infection Prevention.

A short section of the book as a preview is available here: https://www.cambridgescholars.com/resources/pdfs/978-1-0364-4766-3-sample.pdf 

The book is published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle, UK

ISBN: 1-0364-4766-9 and ISBN13: 978-1-0364-4766-3

In this episode, Martin Kiernan talks to Dr Gabriel Birgand, Clinical Co-ordinator of EUCIC (European Committee on Infection Control) which is part of ESCMID Global (European Society for Clinical Microbilogy and Infectious Dieseases). Gabriel is the lead of the Regional Center for Infection Prevention and Control (Pays de la Loire region), Nantes University Hospital and also Head of the National Center for Surveillance and Prevention of AMR (antimicrobial resistance) and HAI (healthcare associated infections) in primary care and nursing homes.

EUCIC has recently published a set of slides that have reviewed recent papers relevant to SSI prevention and we had the opportunity to discuss these papers. The link to the slides is below.

You can find our more about the activities of EUCIC here: https://www.escmid.org/science-research/eucic/eucic-educational-activities/

To download the freely available slides, follow this link: https://www.escmid.org/fileadmin/escmid/media/pdf/eucic/Review_EUCIC_02_07_2025.pptx 

In this episode, Brett reviews a few posters from the Hong Kong Infection Control Nurses Association conference.  Topics include fit testing, bloodstream infection surveillance and environmental cleaning.