Jordan Reinbold's article review

Emanuele, Patricia. “Antibiotic Resistance.” American Association of Occupational Health Nurses, Inc. 58 (2010): 363-365.

In the article “Antibiotic Resistance”, Patricia Emanuele provides multiple aspects of the background issues surrounding antibiotics. Emanuele, as listed in her credentials, is an occupational health nurse at Morristown, NJ hospital. She begins her article with a powerful paragraph including the sentence; “The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, 2010) states that antibiotic resistance is one of the world’s most pressing public health problems; the number of bacteria resistant to antibiotics has increased in the past decade, and many bacterial infections are becoming resistant to the most commonly prescribed antibiotics.” (Emanuele, 363) This one sentence both grabs attention of the audience and summarizes the basis of the rest of the article.

The next section is an educational resource. It covers the basics of what bacteria are, how antibiotics work, and how resistance is becoming a problem. She follows this section with a short section about the cost of antibiotic resistant bacteria and the most common bacteria found “A recent study found that antibiotic-resistant infections cost the U.S. health care system more than $20 billion annually and society more than $35 billion and lead to more than 8 million additional hospital days.” (Emanuele, 364) These enormous numbers shed light on the financial problem resistant bacteria pose to our society. Some of the most common resistant bacteria, “Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), Streptococcus pneumoniae, gonorrhea, typhoid fever, vancomycin/glycopeptide-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus (VISA/ GISA), and vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE)” (Emanuele, 364), are then listed. In the next section, the author brings up the important issue of global concern. Emanuele concludes her article with section with specific advice to her fellow occupational health nurses. This section contains little information that is of use to me for my specific project.

Overall, Emanuele does an excellent job in providing basic knowledge of antibiotic resistance. The article could be picked up by a person with minimal knowledge, and properly educate them on the basics of today’s growing concern. It is also important to note that the article was published in 2010, so the information it contains should be recent and relevant. Emanuele uniquely includes a small graphic that gives simple steps to appropriate antibiotic use. After seeing the effectiveness of the table in her article, I would like to attempt a similar concept in my project for the website. The article could serve as a solid base of general education for the background section of my project, and also for the website.

Emanuele provides a good source for background information that is already known, such as “Bacteria are living one-celled microbes with the ability to change and adapt for survival” (Emanuel, 363), and “Antibiotics kill or slow the growth of bacteria and have reduced illness and death from many harmful bacterial infections since penicillin was first introduced in the 1940s”(Emanuel, 363). Although these simple definitions may now seem trivial to our class, I feel that they are important to a website that will be available to the general public. The only new material the article provides are the cost numbers for 2009, which were based off of a study that the author cites. The numbers may also not even be considered “new” information. A better word would be updated information, considering every year a new report is published. Most of the rest of the article is a database of common knowledge.

Considering the fact that the article is mostly stating common knowledge facts, it’s hard to disagree with anything that Emanuele states. The article does, however, contain a list of some of the most common and dangerous antibiotic resistant bacteria. This bit of information is important to me, as I plan on focusing on this topic for my project. The bacteria on the list are not further discussed in Emanuele’s article, but the list does open the door to further research specific to my topic.