water pitcher mix ups in the hospital, how to avoid? - page 2

we only use plastic bags to put the ice in. That way we can hand it to the family member in the hall who requests ice, or we can take it to the room and put in the pitcher. But the pitcher stays in the room.

If you use the big gallon ziplock type bags then you can actually put ice and water in them and take them to the rooms that way. I used to do it all the time and it worked fine. You can also just put ice in the bags and then fill the water in the room depending on where the sink is. I doubt if the sink is in the bathroom that the patients would appreciate that.

I think I've mentioned before that I've become pretty OCD about the whole sanitation thing, but it troubles me to see a pitcher/cup come out of a room and then also to see it be taken back into the room again (even in the event that the top and bottom don't become mixed up). In other words, both aspects bother me as I just see room for spreading pathogens from space to space.

For the same reason, I don't like to see a cart with ice go into a room, come out, then go into another room. Are there plastic cups on the unit? Because I'd far prefer to take new cheap plastic cups fulls of ice in to refill the pitchers (or clean plastic bags, either way). Then those bags or cups can go directly into the trash in the pt's room. Is this just too much craziness about sanitization on my part?