Hospital-Onset Bacteremia—Counting Them All

You open the email from your hospital infection preventionist with dread. “This email is to alert you that we have identified an infection in a patient in the neonatal intensive care unit. E coli was isolated from…this infection was reviewed by the Infection Prevention committee and determined to not meet criteria for CLABSI.” Those of us in hospital leadership positions have all been there. First the relief: phew, it’s not a central line–associated bloodstream infection (CLABSI). Then the guilt: after all, it is still an infection that mattered a great deal to the infant.