I am currently completing a cardio placement on a general respiratory ward and am enjoying the experience. On Tuesday, I was conducting a treatment on a patient in the High Dependency Unit of the ward. The patient was in with acute septic shock and secondary E. Coli pneumonia, with associated acute renal failure. The patient was unconscious, and so we my supervisor and myself) were performing airway clearance techniques on him.
The patient obviously had no control over his bowels, and whilst we were treating him, he was incontinent, and it was quite a runny stool. We were obviously wearing gloves whilst treating so we did not come in direct contact with the patient. Once we finished treatment, we thoroughly washed our hands and arms before leaving the unit. Some time later in the day, I was told that 5 of the 6 patients had begun passing severe diarrhea, and there was a risk of noro-virus outbreak, and HDU was then deemed restricted access.
Luckily, there was no case of similar symptoms outside of HDU, therefore the precautions we took to maintain self-cleanliness were quite effective. So I stress to you, wash your hands and equipment after each patient to reduce the risk of any cross contamination.
1 comment:
Thanks for the tip Steve, you were obviously paying close attention during my group's presentation last year. It seems often that we have more physical patient contact than any of the other people working with the patients, so it's really important our hands are clean before and after each patient. it's easy to think that they don't have an open wound or there was no sputum flying around, but it's simple things like your situation, where not washing hands may result in a hospital wide outbreak, making alot of people sick and even possibly costing lives, so nice work :-)
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