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One of the biggest infection control challenges lies in convincing healthcare workers that all the hand washing, gowns, gloves, and masks are necessary. Healthcare workers so seldom catch nosocomial infections themselves that their role in transmitting infections is invisible and, probably for some, hard to believe.
Recently, a 55-year-old intensive-care-unit nurse with poorly controlled type 2 diabetes developed severe pneumonia that required intubation and ventilation. She was working at the National Naval Medical Center in Maryland when a nosocomial outbreak of Acinetobacter infections was occurring throughout the military hospital network. Her blood, sputum, and pleural fluid cultures all grew the same strain of Acinetobacter baumannii, …