MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (WV News) — WVU Medicine recently honored the first two graduates of its new Healthcare Epidemiology Certification Program, which aims to train doctors to prevent infections in hospital settings.

WVU Health System Chief Quality Officer Dr. Michael Stevens explained that every hospital in the country needs an infection prevention program, but very few are actually lead or co-lead by physicians. Thus, WVU Medicine's new certificate program was created.

"Having formal training helps folks do this work to the best extent that they can, approach it scientifically and maximally reduce the risk to patients," Stevens said. "I would estimate that in the state of West Virginia, we probably have four formally trained physician hospital epidemiologists, two of which we graduated fr

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