Chapter ID: CBB760923391

Cleanliness costs: the evolving relationship between infection and length of stay in antibiotic-era hospitals (2021)

unapi

Hospital acquired infection (HAI] - referred to as ‘nosocomial’ infection in US terminology - emerged as a specific policy concern in the mid-twentieth century, although it has a much longer lineage. This chapter uses a comparative Anglo-American perspective to repositions the debate on the history of HAIs, which has to date been focused on scientific understanding of infection through the use of evolutionary paradigms, the development of new approaches such as clinical epidemiology and the enduring fascination with the discovery, use and abuse of antibiotics and associated rise of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Some of this historical research has marginalised or ignored (by choice or ignorance) the key issue that health care is an economic, as well as a scientific-clinical activity. These lacunae are particularly evident when historians discuss how responses to HAIs resulted in the formation of protocols and teams, which they invariably articulate as comprised of clinical/technical staff (surgeons, physicians, nurses, microbiologists and epidemiologists). There has been minimal recognition that hospital administrators and managers could (and did) play key roles in these developments because of the significant and increasing impact of HAIs on hospital costs, arising in part through concerns about length of patient stay, and through the roles of insurance companies in the Unites States and economists at national policymaking levels in the UK. (Publisher)

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Book Anne Marie Rafferty; Marguerite Dupree; Fay Bound Alberti (2021) Germs and governance: The past, present and future of hospital infection, prevention and control. unapi

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Authors & Contributors
Victoria Bell
Aledort, Julia Elizabeth
Alvarez, Adriana
Anderson, Warwick H.
Condrau, Flurin
Gradmann, Christoph
Journals
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Asclepio: Archivo Iberoamericano de Historia de la Medicina
Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadienne d'Histoire de la Medecine
Dynamis: Acta Hispanica ad Medicinae Scientiarumque Historiam Illustrandam
História, Ciências, Saúde---Manguinhos
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Publishers
Manchester University Press
Harvard University
Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra
Melbourne University Press
Oxford University Press
Palgrave Macmillan
Concepts
Infectious diseases
Hospitals and clinics
Patients
Public health
Antibiotics
Medicine
People
Down, John Langdon Haydon
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
19th century
20th century, late
20th century, early
Places
Great Britain
Brazil
Portugal
Australia
Germany
Japan
Institutions
St. Bartholomew's Hospital (London)
Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh
Fairfield Hospital (Victoria, Australia)
Coimbra University Hospital
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