jambo372 said:
Lots of things could harbour germs in a hospital - not just bibles. In fact pathogenic micro-organisms probably would be unable to survive on a bible because it is holy.
Thank you. I now have a new sig.
I think the best way to deal with nosocomial infection would be as follows :
Have a unit especially built for patients with infections. Isolate all patients with Staphylococcal infections in special sanitary rooms. Also isolate patients with any contagious infection in these rooms. They should be locked. Any nurses or doctors who enter should wear gloves and mask and gown. Hands should be washed with disinfectant gels after leaving these rooms. Gowns should be frequently washed. Special equipment should be available to treat patients who would be in a normal ICU if they weren't infected.
I don't live in the UK, but this is already done in the U.S. All patients with infections diseases are kept in isolations rooms. Signs are posted on their closed doors and noone, including family, can enter without gowns, gloves and masks, all of which are disposable and are removed in the patient's room, just before exiting. None of these items are washed and reused.
Also, hands are to be washed immediately upon leaving the room or anti-bacterial handgel is available. Everyone is taught how to do this in their initial orientation and the infection control department provides ongoing monitoring on the unit and there is a yearly video and teaching which must be completed on handwashing and infection control.
Patients with respiratory infection should be locked in a room as above with no air-conditioning. Patients with enteric disease should have waste disposed of separately.
No air conditioning is ridiculous since where I live, the temperatures get up to 40 degrees Celsius in the Summer. I think that you mean that you want to keep airborne infectious diseases, such as TB, out of the air circulation. This is already done by keeping these patients in special rooms with reverse air flow. The doors to these rooms are kept shut and special masks are used when working with these patients. If they are removed from the room for tests or surgery, they have to wear special masks.
Patients with infectious diarrhea, c-diff, are kept in isolation rooms and their waste and bedclothes are treated as infected materials. Additional housekeeping with antibacterial agents and special procedures are used on all patient rooms for patients who were treated with infectious diseases.
All nurses and doctors should be screened for MRSA at least weekly. If they are found to be carriers they should be suspended and treated with anti-septic nasal ointment until their next swab is clear.
You will end up suspending most of your staff and then repeatedly suspending them. Anyone who works with patients for any significant amount of time is going to end up with MRSA colonized in their nostrils. Also, it take three days for MRSA cultures to grow, so you'll automatically be having people with MRSA working with patients, but testing negative for two days who actually have MRSA.
Bedclothes should be washed between patients.
I would really like to see your source for bedclothes not being washed in the UK. Stripping beds and washing down the mattesses is part of housekeeping 101.
Operating theatres should be spotless. No one with an infection should be allowed out of designated areas.
This is already done.
Drug susceptibility tests should be done as often as possible and the drug susceptibility of the most common bacteria should be reported to doctors to help them pick empirical therapy. Drug classes could be cycled and/or mixed to reduce resistance potential. Standard narrow spectrum agents should be used in preference to potent or broad spectrum agents whenever possible. Viral infection and trivial bacterial infection should not be treated with antibiotics.
People coming in with infections are tested to determine what their infections are and what drugs that infection is most likely to respond to. Broad spectrum antibiotics are commonly used initially because in some cases it takes several days for cultures to grow and it's not safe to let an infection become more established and dangerous. I agree that the overuse of antibiotics has led to the rise of so-called superbugs, but to not treat an infection because you're waiting for a culture could mean the difference between life and death for a patient.
Everybody should be vaccinated against Pneumococcal infection, not just the elderly, asthmatic and immunosuppressed.
This of course would be time consuming and expensive.
Yep. Not to mention the fact that we routinely have shortages of flu vaccine for those who are most in need to begin with.
In addition to this scientists should continue to look for new vaccines against these various infections. They should also look for more weak points in the bacterial cell in order to help synthesize new unique anti-microbial drugs with very low resistance inducing potential.
What makes you think this isn't being done?
I have been reading about the situation in the UK re: MRSA and I think that any attempt to improve infection control in hospitals is a good thing, but to think that you can eliminate MRSA altogether is, frankly, ridiculous.
As a p.s., most patients who are religious bring their own Bibles or other religious texts with them. I worked at a Catholic hospital and those who wanted a Bible were provided with one from a supply that was kept in the clergy office. And yes, all paper items are thrown out when the patient is discharged.
