Nosocomial Infections: The Evolution of Medical Epidemiology

Abstract

Dr. Wenzel, a graduate of Haverford College, Jefferson Medical College, and the University of London, completed his internship at Philadelphia General Hospital and his residency, chief residency, and fellowship training in Infectious Diseases at the University of Maryland Medical School. He then served in the US Navy for 2 years with the US Marine Corps at the Naval Medical Field Research Laboratory at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Dr. Wenzel joined the faculty at the University of Virginia (UVA) in 1972 where he established state-of-the-art surveillance for nosocomial infections and developed the first statewide surveillance system to track rates of hospital-acquired infections. While at UVA, he was the founding editor of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology. After a year’s sabbatical at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, he joined the faculty of the University of Iowa, establishing the leading training program for physician-epidemiologists and winning the first-ever National Institutes of Health training grant in Hospital Epidemiology. In 1995, Dr. Wenzel became the Chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Medical College of Virginia Campus, Virginia Commonwealth University. He has been a prolific author with 450 publications and has served as editor of five textbooks and lead editor of a Guide for Infection Control in the Hospital, which is being translated into eight languages for free distribution to developing countries. From 1992 to 2000, Dr. Wenzel was a member of the Editorial Board of The New England Journal of Medicine. In September 2001, he became the journal’s first Editor-at-Large. Dr. Wenzel is a member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI) and the Association of American Physicians (AAP), a Charter Member of the Surgical Infection Society (SIS), a former President of the Society for Healthcare Epidemiology of America (SHEA), and a councilor for Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). He has trained 50 hospital epidemiologists worldwide. Dr. Wenzel has received numerous awards for research and teaching, including the Abbott Achievement Award for Outcomes Research, the Humboldt Research Award for Senior US Scientists, a Senior International Fellowship Fogarty Award from the National Institutes for Health, and most recently, the Woodward Award from the US Navy for “vision and leadership in Public Health and Preventive Medicine” in 1997 and the Bruce Award from the American College of Physicians–American Society of Internal Medicine (ACP-ASIM) “for distinguished contribution in Preventive Medicine” in 1999.