Admissions to surgical unit

[surgery2]

Does anyone have information about patients being admitted to a surgical unit who are medical patients with infections and being put on IV antibiotics? In order not to hold patients in the ER the nursing supervisor is doing this after our nurse manager has gone home and we are worried about the infections spreading. Is anyone aware of increased infections?

[Nesher, BSN, RN]

What types of infections are you talking about?

If the patient is contagious - of course you need to have the person in a private room with isolation precautions at the level needed. But an infection in and of inself is no reason for concern, especially if the nurses, aides, docs, lab folks, families etc WASH THEIR HANDS.

I work on a stem call transplant unit. Rarely we have had to take medical type patient due to bed control issues in house. But because our patients have no immune system to speak of we put medical folks with, for example a simple puemonia in respiratory isolation - gown, face masks with shield and gloves. Plus we don't allow them to walk around the unit. The medical docs (and patients and families) hate it so they are usually pretty diligent and insistent in getting their folks moved off our floor :) Of course we aren't doing it just to get them moved though!

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

We have both medical patients and surgical patients on our unit. A medical patient admitted with an infection like pneumonia, wound infections, etc. are not cohabited with a surgical patient. Hopefully if a nurse has both kinds of patients they are washing their hands maticulously, etc.

However, a medical patient such as pancreatitis, GI bleed will be admitted with a surgical patient.

[RNPATL, DNP, RN]

On my unit, we have designaed areas for patients with infections .... fortunately for us all of our rooms are private on my floor (40 beds total). While we like to maintain infections in one central area, in reality, if we have to admit them to the surgical side, the nurses are careful with their hand-washing.

According to our infection control nurse, because of standard precautions, there is no really worry about cross contamination. While in theory I can agree with this, I would just assume keep infections together and out of the surgical hall .... just seems neater that way to me.

[adidas99]

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