Challenges Faced by Hospital Epidemiologists Today

Michael Edmond, MD, MPH, MPA, chief quality officer at the University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, explains current challenges faced by hospital epidemiologists.

Interview Transcript (modified slightly for readability):

“There’s a number of challenges that are facing hospital epidemiologists today. We’ve had, for many years, emerging threats, new infectious diseases that are appearing; we have the accelerating problem of antibiotic resistance; and then, in this particular era, we have a number of sociopolitical problems that are also going to impact us in hospital epidemiology. Those include the anti-science movement, the anti-government movement, which involves defunding of agencies that work on problems that are really important to us. And so, I think it’s a particularly challenging time.”