In this week's episode, Brett and Martin talk to Adjunct Assistant Prof Dr Kalisvar Marimuthu, who is currently a senior consultant in Infectious Diseases at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases and Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore. We discuss his recent paper that notes that over 50% of transmissions occurring in healthcare result from plasmid and not colonal spread. Traditional IPC interventions seem to work for clonal transmission, however new thinking is required to tackle the problems of plasmids.

Papers we discuss are:

1. Marimuthu K, Venkatachalam I, Koh V et al. Whole genome sequencing reveals hidden transmission of carbapenemase-producing Enterobacterales. Nat Commun 2022; 13: 3052. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9160272/

In this week's episode, Brett and Martin caught up with Jon Otter to discuss the 'Glove or no glove' campaign currently being implemented at Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals in London UK. Jon has recently blogged about this (https://reflectionsipc.com/2022/05/04/we-need-to-talk-about-gloves/), a blog always worth following if you like to read Jon's thoughts and musings on current issues in IPC.

In this week's episode, Martin Kiernan talks to Brett Mitchell about his recent paper that estimates the burden of HCAI from a prevalence study.

Papers discussed are:

Lydeamore MJ, Mitchell BG, Bucknall T, Cheng AC, Russo PL, Stewardson AJ Burden of five healthcare associated infections in Australia. Antimicrob Resist Infect Control 2022; 11: 69. https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13756-022-01109-8

Russo PL, Stewardson AJ, Cheng AC, Bucknall T, Mitchell BG The prevalence of healthcare associated infections among adult inpatients at nineteen large Australian acute-care public hospitals: a point prevalence survey. Antimicrob Resist Infect Control 2019; 8: 114. https://aricjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13756-019-0570-y

This week's podcast is a live chat recorded in Melbourne in June and features Phil Russo, Brett Mitchell and Martin Kiernan, who discuss whether we think that we are IPC experts (or not). Have a listen and make your own mind up!

A/Professor Deb Friedman is the Deputy Chief Health Officer at the Department of Health Victoria,  Australia. Prior to that she was the Medical Director of infection prevention control and response in Victoria, a key role in Victorias covid response. With an extensive history in infection prevention and control as an infectious diseases  physician Deb has played a vital role in Victoria's COVID response. In this episode, Phil Russo chats to her about her role as DCHO and her recent involvement with the arrival of monkey pox.  With her great insight Deb also shares her  views about the airborne v droplet paradigm.

In this podcast Phil Russo chats with Dr Sally Roberts, Clinical Head of Microbiology at the Auckland District Health Board, Aotearoa New Zealand. She is also the National Clinical Lead  for the Health Quality & Safety Commission New Zealand Infection Prevention and Control programme and recently led the recent first national point prevalent survey of healthcare associated infections across Aotearoa New Zealand. Sally tells us what led to the first ever PPS in Aotearoa New Zealand, the many challenges they endured, the major findings and how the data will be used nationally. A publication is in the making, in the meantime you can read the full Aotearoa New Zealand Health Safety and Quality report here.

In this podcast, Brett talks to Dr Gillian Ray-Barruel from the University of Queensland and Griffith University. We talk about Gillian's development of the I-DECIDED tool - decision tool for assessment and management of all invasive devices in the hospital setting.

In the podcast, Gillian mentioned she was happy to be contacted.

The link to the paper can be found here: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35439078/

In this podcast, Martin and Brett talk to Trish Hurst, Belinda Henderson and Dr Patrick Harris about how WGS is being used in two major Australian hospitals. We here about how it started, how is works now and the potential of WGS in real-time for infection control services.

The discussion is centred around this pre-print publication: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.05.02.22273921v1 "Clinical implementation of routine whole-genome sequencing for hospital infection control of multi-drug resistant pathogens"

In this week's episode, Martin Kiernan talks to Dr David Weber, Professor of Medicine, Pediatrics and Epidemiology at the University of North Carolina about recent papers on environmental contamination with Clostridioides difficile. We discuss antibiotics and the effect of asymptomatic carriage on risk of transmission. The papers we discuss are:

• Warren BG, et al. The Impact of Infection Versus Colonization on Clostridioides difficile Environmental Contamination in Hospitalized Patients With Diarrhea. Open Forum Infect Dis. 2022;9(4):ofac069.  https://doi:10.1093/ofid/ofac069

In this podcast, Brett Mitchell talks to Professor Daryl Williams about respirators and facial hair. So much to learn, so much more to know. The talk was based on a paper published in Infection Disease and Health.

The article link: https://www.idhjournal.com.au/article/S2468-0451(22)00003-7/fulltext

Prof Daryl Williams is the Director of the Department of Anaesthesia and Pain Management. His clinical and research interests include neuro-anaesthesia, resuscitation, trauma medicine and advanced airway management.