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Every corner of the hospital includes sinks, hand sanitizer stations and reminders for regular washings. And while health care providers are trained to constantly clean up, a new study reveals that patients may neglect this responsibility.
Researchers from the University of Michigan tested 399 hospitalized patients and found that 14% of them were carriers of an antibiotic-resistant "superbacterium" bacteria to the hands or nostrils early in the morning. their stay at the hospital. They also tested objects commonly used by patients, such as the nurse call button. Nearly a third of these objects have also been tested positive for these bacteria.
Among those who did not have multidrug-resistant hands and nostrils at the beginning of their stay, another 6% ended up contracting the superbug later in their stay.
The researchers also reported that six patients in their study had actually developed methicillin-resistant Super Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infection, all of which had tested positive for MRSA on their hands and hospital ward surfaces. . Scientists have also tested the vancomycin-resistant Enterococci (VRE) and Gram-Negative Resistant Bacteria (RGNB).
Thanks to the overuse of antibiotics and sanitizers, the three groups of bacteria have evolved to resist traditional treatments.
"The speech on hand hygiene is largely focused on doctors, nurses and other front-line staff. All policies and performance measures are focused, and rightly so, "says Dr. Lona Mody, an epidemiologist and patient safety researcher. appears in Clinical Infectious Diseases. "But our results argue in favor of a treatment of MDRO transmission also involving patients."
Alarmingly, a similar study presented this month at the European Congress of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases (ECCMID) found that hospital staff, especially those working in intensive care, do not wash their hands reliable.
The researchers recorded 3,246 hours of hospital traffic in 18 ICUs around the country to observe when and how health care providers went from "dirty" to "clean" care tasks – and noting all the spaces between tasks where a wash hands could or should have been done. inserted.
They found that health workers washed their hands properly only half the time when they moved from a dirty task, such as handling patients' body fluids, to a clean task, and barely 43% of the time. time when they moved from cleaner tasks to dirtier ones. In addition, staff were more likely to move from a dirty task to a clean task if they were wearing gloves, while hand washing was less likely to occur.
"Infection prevention is everyone's business," says Mody, who reminds the hospital and the outside of "washing your hands often using good techniques – especially before and after food preparation, before eating food, after the toilet, after taking care of someone who is sick – to protect yourself and others. "
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