Rohan Mehra

Rohan Mehra is a Specialty Trainee Doctor in Microbiology and Infectious Diseases at the Health Education England Kent, Surrey and Sussex (HEE KSS) Deanery. He was awarded a HIS Travel Grant to attend and present his poster on a study that examined nosocomial COVID-19 rates before and after removing a healthcare worker mask mandate. This presentation took place in the Infection Prevention Control (IPC) Session. 

“I applied for this grant to help me attend the ECCMID 2023 conference. I was selected to present two posters and the travel grant allowed me to realise this opportunity. One of my posters was related to healthcare-acquired infection and therefore fit perfectly into the HIS agenda of ensuring that recent research in IPC is presented. I joined HIS early on in my training and I have found it a great organisation that is incredibly supportive to trainees and always promotes IPC, which is a personal interest of mine.

“This year the conference was in the incredible Copenhagen and there was a large push on sustainability, which was great to see. I spent a lot of the conference in awe of the size and vastness of it, with roughly 10,000 attendees! It would be impossible to accurately summarise just how much there is on offer at ECCMID and it is impossible to attend even most of the sessions, let alone all of them. Luckily, they allow online access to all lectures for six months afterwards. It is an incredible mix of expert led panels, latest research talks, symposiums aimed directly at educating trainees, workshops, and a whole host of committee meetings, many of which you can sit in on. They even had an outbreak simulation this year that was directed at giving trainees experience in this area.

“The main goals of attending the conference were to present my posters as well as learn from experts in many varied fields. Our HIS-sponsored poster was well received as we discussed the impact of a staff mask-wearing mandate on nosocomial COVID-19 rates. I used the rest of the time to attend a multitude of different talks on varied topics."