Making Health Care Safer infographic

This graphic shows how a patient might get CRE and how CRE are spread.

Jan has a stroke and goes to a local short-stay hospital. She is stable, but needs long-term critical care at another long-term facility.

In long-term acute-care hospital, other patients in this facility have CRE. A nurse doesn’t wash his hands, and CRE are spread to Jan. She develops a fever and is put on antibiotics without proper testing.

A few days later Jan becomes unstable and goes back to the local short-stay hospital, but the new doctors don’t know that she has CRE. A doctor doesn’t wash her hands after treating Jan and CRE are spread to other patients.

How CRE Take Over

1. Lots of germs in the human gut, one or two are CRE.
2. Antibiotics kill off good bacteria.
3. CRE grow.
4. CRE share genetic defenses and make other bacteria resistant too.