HOSPITAL BACTERIA SPREAD
On the heels of all the concern of late regarding hospital deaths and hospital infections comes new studies which show common instruments used by doctors and hospital staff can be important sources of bacteria which can sicken patients.
Back in the old days, nurses used to wear hats. They no longer wear hats because they provide a fomite, a physical surface that serves to transmit hospital infections.
When you wash your hands, you reduce bacterial counts on them. And so when a doctor or nurse touches a patient, and the IV lines that are being used, there’s less of a chance that bacteria will travel to the patient, and infect the patient.
But what if a hospital worker quickly runs back to check a computer in the lab, or just punches the numbers on an IV fluid drip machine?
Electronic records have caused a sharp rise in the use of keyboards in the hospital setting. If one doesn’t wash the hands again, it could be an issue of hospital infections.
The latest research out of Northwestern University shows computer keyboards and keyboard covers harbor highly resistant Staph and Enteroccus infections which can live on the surfaces for more than 24 hours. In that time period, the bacteria can easily spread to bare, and even gloved hands while working with the patient.
Dr. David Calfee, an epidemiologist at Mt. Sinai Medical Center, says, “Cleaning your hands before you use the computer is very important to avoid the contamination on these surfaces, and reduce the risk of hospital infections.”
The study found the more touches to the keyboard, the more likely it was that bacteria would be transmitted to the worker’s hands, thus increasing the risk of hospital infections.
So, it’s especially important when around immune compromised patients that if a keyboard is touched, the healthcare worker needs to go back and rewash, or use alcohol based cleaners.
But what about the keyboards themselves?
“Certainly as a surface in a health care setting it does need to be disinfected on a regular basis. Certainly the more often you do it the less contamination you are going to get,” says Dr. Calfee.
Another study out of Emory University and Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta shows one in five stethoscopes used by hospital doctors was contaminated by Staph aureus and other serious infection-causing bacteria. “It certainly is an important thing to consider. We don’t have a lot of studies to show that people were infected by contaminated stethoscopes but certainly the more environmental contamination there is the more at risk a patient maybe. Any environmental surface should be disinfected,” Dr. Calfee states.
In fact, when stethoscopes were wiped with an alcohol pad, the bacteria counts plummeted to zero. It’s an indication that, in order to reduce the risk of hospital infections, doctors should be cleaning both their hands and the tools they use before seeing a patient.
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