Columbia Nursing Research Featured in WSJ
On May 16, 2017 the Wall Street Journal reported on Columbia Nursing’s vital research on drug-resistant infections in nursing homes conducted by 2017 PhD graduate Sainfer Aliyu '17, Arlene Smaldone, PhD, assistant dean for scholarship and research, Patricia Stone, PhD, director, center for health policy.
The Bug Problem in Nursing Homes
By Lucette Lagnado
There’s a bug problem in some nursing homes, and it’s not what you think.
Residents of long-term care facilities are vulnerable to drug-resistant infections known as superbugs and can easily spread the deadly germs to others.
Between 11% and 59% of nursing-home residents have been “colonized” with certain types of superbugs, putting them at more risk of developing a full-blown infection, according to researchers at Columbia University School of Nursing. A person is colonized when a germ is on the skin or in the body—for example, in the nose. Although not yet infected, the person can spread the bug.
While government regulators and the public have focused on the dangers of superbugs in hospitals, how nursing homes cope with such hard-to-treat germs has received less attention.
Yet nursing-home residents are “especially susceptible” to these infections because of their age, tenuous immune systems and many ailments, according to the Columbia analysis, published this month in the American Journal of Infection Control. Merely living in a nursing home is a risk factor, the paper says.
Read the full article here.