Preventing Hospital-Acquired Infections

[SCI-Nurse]

Many studies have shown that the #1 method most important for the prevention of hospital-acquired infections (often drug resistant) is consistent and effective hand hygiene on the part of caregivers and visitors. The CDC is encouraging hospitals to show this short film (or podcast) to all patients admitted to the hospital (which is what we are doing now where I work). It is also applicable to family, agency, or PCA caregivers in your home.

Take the time now to look at it now:

http://www.cdc.gov/handhygiene/Patie...ion_Video.html

(KLD)

[kenf]

Have to agree on this. I've had 2 UTI's in almost 5 years of this nightmare. Got both of them at the hospital. One almost killed me.

[fishin'guy]

I had MRSA 4 times, twice it was systemic, and almost kicked it. It seames that what you say is true. I was in the U of W the last 4 times, and they have a RIGOROUS hand and rehab cleaning system, and it worked. The previous infections happened at a diff, hospital.So everyone be sure to wash, coming and going to see someone.

[rfbdorf]

If the nurses had washed their hands with soap and water instead of squirting their hands with disinfectant, my wife would have been less likely to get a C. diff. infection.
Comes to that, given better hygiene, maybe she wouldn't have gotten the infection from the PICC line during chemotherapy that led to 2 spinal abscesses requiring surgery that led to severe kyphosis that led to more surgery that left her paraplegic.
- Richard

BTW, a spammer (lacewigs) seems to have inserted itself above; perhaps a mod could kindly disinfect this thread.
....thanks, moderator!

[thehipcrip]

Our local hospital has policies in place about hand washing and hygiene -- non-compliance by caregivers triggers disciplinary action. I have to assume that licensed nurses are, at some point, taught about the importance of hand hygiene, and that they are, at a minimum, aware that super-resistant bacteria like MRSA pose a real threat to patients and staff alike.

So I am incredibly frustrated that, despite all this, I have to police my caregivers about washing their hands before they interact with me. I've found that the number of nurses and nurses aides who don't follow proper procedure is so high that I'm afraid to use an overnight bag when hospitalized out of fear that someone who hasn't cleaned their hands properly will empty it while I'm asleep and expose me to infection. (That's how I first got pseudomonas.)

The first -- and only -- time I used an overnight bag at my local hospital was when I spent two days on a gurney in the ER while I waited for a bed to become available upstairs. When I called a nurse to empty the bag for me, I actually had to fight with her to get her to clean her hands or put on gloves before touching my bag. On my first remark that she needed to wash her hands, she asked me if I was going to buy her hand lotion because washing her hands made them too dry. When I replied that I had hand lotion in my bag that she was welcome to use after she washed her hands and finished with my bag, she went off on a rant that included a lecture that she was a hundred times more likely to 'catch something nasty' from me than I am from her. I promptly reported her to doctor who directed the ER, who just happened to be on duty that night.

There is no excuse for patients needing to educate medical professionals about the need for hand hygiene and monitor their compliance with it.

[woman from Europe]

I am so happy I didn't go to the hospital in US, my daughter told me I wouldn't been able to go to a Norwegian hospital for a year after. And I am going to the SCI hospital in September and the first thing they asked if I had been to the hospital in the US because they are afraid of MRSA. I didn't know they were so stright. I knew the nurses and the doctors loose their job for a year, but they do get full paid.

So thank you Addiesue for taking me to your doctor and the same to Betheny and Jill. They are so stright here. If it was an emergency they would have put me in isolation.

[smapple]

My wife has gone to the hospital a lot. We have developed a practice that has kept the potential for infections down. When she goes, we send our caregiver, and the rest of the family takes turns being with her. She is attended 24 hrs. by somebody familiar. They wash their hands, of course, the same as we do at home. But the severt is that she is th ONLY patient they weill touch, so there is little chance they will transfer something to her from another patient. And then, other than specialty items, we DON NOT allow the nursing staff to touch her, We give her everything, and do all the touching. This works well as far as we can tell. She has UTI that stays with her now for her whole life, that we believe she first caught in the hospital. The Urologist says it will never leave, only be controlled. But she never brings anything new home. hte key is that even with washing the hands, etc. all a nurse has to do is put their hands on their hips- the same hips they put their hands on after they touched the last patient, and they are transferring germs.

Try this if you can.

[Still Learning]

I got C-Diff while in ICU. Several years later my, otherwise healthy young sister-in-law (age 34), had surgery to reverse a temporary colostomy and acquired C-Diff in the same ICU. She became septic, was in a coma, on a ventilator, and died 3months later (last November). My baby brother and her had only been married for 2 1/2 years and their first baby was only 8 months old at the time of her death.

It really does make me nervous about needing surgery or to be hospitalized...

[Tim C.]

Originally Posted by SCI-Nurse

Many studies have shown that the #1 method most important for the prevention of hospital-acquired infections...................
(KLD)

is to not go there in the first place.
Every time i went i came home with a b-sore or mrsa, etc

[TomRL]

If hospitals had to pick up the tab for the entire hospitalization if someone acquired an infection, you would see a lot more compliance.