Ignoring Proper Hygiene
So I have come to realize that although everyone talks about it often, something that is really important but not practiced often is good hygiene. It's something that I have noticed in the past, but it was brought to my attention more recently after having to take an online course for my job.
People often times ignore proper hand and instrument hygiene, not because they don't know about it, but because they get too caught up in their daily schedule to think about what they are actually doing. There was one time that I saw a doctor use a pen to help take depth measurements of a wound infected with MRSA, and then he stuck the pen in his pocket and left. The first thing that came to my mind was GROSS! Then I couldn't help but think...What if he uses that pen and spreads the infection across someone's chart...What if he sticks food in the pocket...What if he uses that pen in a non-infected wound?!
This one mistake can easily cause ill health to other patients, providers and that doctor's family. I was baffled as to how careless the person was, especially since it is estimated that the prevalence of hospital-acquired MRSA effects 46 of every 1,000 patients (Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology, 2007).
This fatal problem can be eliminated with proper hygiene. Now I'll admit sometimes things can get repetitive and I don't always follow proper hand hygiene when I'm not touching my patients often, but one is supposed to wash one's hands or use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer (which is shown to kill more germs than soap and water as long as the hands are not visibly soiled) before and after every patient encounter--even if you only touch the equipment that the patient used. Facilities should be stocked with hand sanitizer everywhere--at the least--to decrease the spread of infectious diseases...but then again it still won't help if people don't use it.