Welcome to the Micro Blog Christmas 2013 Update! These articles have been published since the last update:

• “Dirty money”: are you getting the right change from microbe-contaminated money? (Published 18th December 2013)
• Could universal glove use provide a false sense of security? (Published 12th December 2013)
• Single room survey: results (Published 10th December 2013)
• Should hospitals provide all patients with single rooms? (Published 3rd December 2013)
• How much Clostridium difficile is hospital acquired? (Published 26th November 2013)
• A postcard from Latin America; carnivals, tango and carbapenem resistance (Published 21st November 2013)
• European Antibiotic Awareness Day: how do we get out of this mess? (Published 18th November 2013)
• A domestic outbreak of gastroenteritis (Published 12th November 2013)
• High levels of antibiotic resistance and low levels of ‘antibiotic literacy’ in the general public are on a dangerous collision course (Published 5th November 2013)
• This study has been bugging me for a while (Published 30th October 2013)
• Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAIs); at what cost? (Published 23rd October 2013)
• Contaminated surfaces contribute to transmission; the question is, how much? (Published 15th October 2013)
• Key themes from ID Week 2013 (Published 9th October 2013)
• Infection Prevention 2013 Conference Report (Published 4th October 2013)
• CRE outbreak control: a view from the trenches (Published 26th September 2013)
• And finally…a particularly festive article was published last week in the BMJ on the survival time of chocolates on hospital wards. The short answer is that chocolates don’t last long on hospital wards, and Roses and preferable to Quality Streets, apparently!

It’s been an enjoyable last few months on the blog, with lots of comments and discussion, so thank-you for those; we do enjoy the interaction. In fact, the recent post on whether hospitals should provide single rooms for all patients has received a record number of comments!

Thank-you in particular to our guest bloggers, Rodney Rohde and Carolyn Dawson. Look out for more guest bloggers in 2014, and if you’re interesting in contributing to the blog, just let us know.

Micro Blog is now on Facebook, so if you like it, please ‘like’ it, if you like.

Finally, we do hope that you have a Merry Christmas and an enjoyable New Year.

See you in 2014.

Jon and Saber.

Photo credit: allerleirau.