BACKGROUND The 'spillover effect' of academic-practice partnerships on hospital nursing staff has received limited attention. In 2007, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) created the VA Nursing Academy (VANA) to fund fifteen partnerships between schools of nursing and local VA healthcare facilities. In this paper, we examine the experiences of the VA staff nurses who worked on the units use...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to characterize 34 vancomycin-resistant VanA Enterococcus faecium isolates obtained from two hospitals in Saudi Arabia and to assess Tn1546 variation within these isolates. METHODS PFGE and multilocus sequence typing (MLST) genotypes, antibiotic susceptibility patterns, the presence of enterococcal surface protein (esp) and hyaluronidase (hyl) genes and co...

The reduction in time required to identify vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) has gained increased importance during hospital outbreaks. In the present study, we implemented a laboratory protocol to speed up the VRE screening from rectal samples. The protocol combines a medium for selective VRE isolation (VREBAC(R), Probac, São Paulo) and a multiplex PCR for detection and identification of ...

In Korea, the incidence of vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) infection has recently been increasing, with a clinical isolation rate of up to 25%. We evaluated the clinical usefulness of real-time PCR for the detection of the vanA gene over conventional culture in patients confirmed as being VRE-colonized. During the evaluation stage, 100 cons...

BACKGROUND The incidence of infection and intestinal colonization with vancomycin resistant enterococci (VRE) is increasing in many countries in the last decade. Concerning the difficult antimicrobial treatment of infections caused by VRE, decreasing the incidence and prevalence of these infections is an important factor in VRE-induced morbidity and mortality control. AIM To determine the pre...

An Enterococcus faecium strain was obtained from a paraprostatic cyst of 17-year-old dog in Greece. Antibiotic susceptibility testing (AST) accomplished by disc diffusion and MIC methods, the isolate demonstrated multidrug-resistant (MDR) phenotype against great variety antibiotics, such as β-Lactams, Quinolones, Macrolides, Tetracyclines, Rifampin, Nitrofurantoin, surprisingly, Glycopeptides, ...

Enterococci, as the major cause of nosocomial infections, have been shown to have an increase in drug resistance during the past two decades. TheEntrococcalemergence of Vancomycin-resistant is very important nowadays. The purpose of this study was to determine the drug sensitivity of Enterococcus faecalis and Enterococcus faecium species against Vancomycin, Tetracycline, Gentamicin, Erythromyci...

INTRODUCTION Enterococcus faecium has emerged as a multidrug-resistant nosocomial pathogen involved in outbreaks worldwide. Our aim was to determine the antimicrobial susceptibility, biofilm production, and clonal relatedness of vancomycin-resistant E. faecium (VREF) clinical isolates from two hospitals in Mexico. METHODS Consecutive clinical isolates (n=56) were collected in two tertiary car...