SHEA Spring Meetings 2007, 2011, 2015 and Beyond?

A decade ago, I was a young associate professor of Epidemiology at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. One afternoon I received a call from Dr. Trish Perl, then President of SHEA and crosstown colleague. Two years earlier, she and I had met when we assisted with the infection control of Bob, an Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin at the National Aquarium, who had been diagnosed with Mycobacterium abscessus pneumonia. She was not calling about marine mammals this time, but rather was asking me to serve on the 2007 SHEA Annual Meeting Planning Committee, as the local "Baltimore" representative. It was an amazing experience. For one, it was when I met future colleague, friend and co-blogger Dan Diekema and other mentors and colleagues - see the 2007 AMPC roster below.

Over the years I've been asked to serve on many other meeting committees including the last old format SHEA Scientific Meeting in Dallas (2011) and the first combined meeting, IDWeek 2012. As 2016 represents my last year on the SHEA Program Planning Committee, I've been looking back over the old committee rosters and reminiscing. What struck me most, besides the amazing colleagues I've crossed paths with, is the overwhelming presence of MDs, specifically ID-trained, on the committees. Looking at the rosters from 2007 (above) and 2011 (right) and excluding SHEA staff, 94% were ID physicians over both years.

The preponderance of ID physicians is not surprising, given that SHEA was founded by ID physicians and our board of directors roster is made up of ID physicians. However, the science and practice of infection prevention and stewardship is evolving into a broader multidisciplinary effort. We now frequently collaborate and learn from a variety of well-trained scientists and clinicians including medical sociologists, medical anthropologists, epidemiologists, biostatisticians, human-factors engineers, infection preventionists, general internists, MBAs, health economists, pharmacists, microbiologists and health psychologists among others.

When faced with the daunting task of walking in the footsteps of prior co-chairs, Lindsay Nicolle, Scott Fridkin, Charlie Huskins and Dan, we recognized that we had an opportunity to broaden the appeal of the conference and strive towards a truly multidisciplinary program. So in 2015, working with the SHEA board and staff, Susan Huang and I convened a Program Planning Committee (figure below) with 42% of its members trained in fields other than infectious diseases. 

This is not to imply that ~40% is the correct balance. Maybe it should be closer to the 15% of 2016. Perhaps future spring meetings will have an implementation focus and over 50% of the planning committee could be experts outside of infectious diseases and other years the focus could be diagnostics and the committee could be loaded with microbiologists. 

The important thing is that we realize that clinical and scientifically, SHEA and our meeting should not be defined by what we were (ID physicians) and what we are not (APIC), they should be defined by what we hope to achieve. And if we truly hope to prevent healthcare-associated infections and the emergence of antimicrobial-resistant pathogens, we need more than ID physicians. Plus, I think it will be a lot of fun!

SHEA 2015: *New* Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Track

 

This is a special guest post by Dr. Silvia Munoz-Price, Enterprise Epidemiologist at Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin Institute for Health and Society and the Department of Medicine. She is co-directing the new SHEA Certificate Track in Post-Acute and Long-Term Care at the 2015 SHEA Meeting in Orlando.

In healthcare, we are in the process of transforming our approach from caring of an isolated individual to caring for the population as a whole. Similarly, we are slowly migrating from paying attention to single hospital encounters to focusing on the continuum of care of individuals. These facts are important in the fields of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology, as in order to control the spread of highly resistant pathogens we need to internalize that our hospital systems are interconnected through patient transfers. This is particularly evident in the interactions between acute care hospitals, long term care acute care hospitals (LTACHs), and nursing homes within regions. A few years ago, this interrelatedness was elegantly described by Won and colleagues in the midst of a regional outbreak of KPC Klebsiella pneumoniae in the Chicago area (Won et al CID 53: 532-540, figure below). Furthermore, controlling the spreadwithin the LTACH changed the whole transmission dynamic in the region (Munoz-Price Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol. 2010 Apr;31(4):341-7).

Research dealing with Infection Control practices in post-acute care settings is progressing, as recently described in this blog here, here and here. Given our interdependence, it is fundamental that providers in post-acute care --who deal directly with these infection control issues-- are knowledgeable and up to date. This year, SHEA’s Spring meeting will have a 2-day post-acute care track specifically designed to provide a general infection control overview to infection control personnel in post-acute care and LTACHs. The co-Director of this track, Dr. Nimalie Stone, is the Medical Epidemiologist for Long-term Care in the Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion (DHQP) at CDC. Additionally, we will have top notch speakers such as David Nace, Lona Mody, Curtis Donskey, among others. Upon completion, attendees will receive a certificate from SHEA.

A full description of the track can be found here. Participation and engagement of our post-acute care/LTACH colleagues is fundamental to succeed in our fight against hospital acquired infections.

We hope to meet you in Orlando!

Discounted registration ends April 17th (save $100), so register now!