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Discussion

Contact Isolation

hello everyone,

I work in a Snf, first time to have pt. on contact isolation. I am a bit confused on how it goes. I know there's a disposable bp cuff, thermometer and all the gowns etc...in that room. Everything that you used inside the room should be disposed properly in that room. But, how do you get back to your cart to put back her inhalers or the blood glucose monitor? I don't know if I made my question clear. Here's the scenario:

Patient is on contact isolation. Put on my gloves, gown, shoe cover; took the blood glucose monitor, her inhalers and all her due medications. Went inside the room. Job done. Leaving that room, I remove all my gloves, gown and shoe..now, how do I put back that inhaler and blood glucose back to the cart? It sounds silly, but how about that inhaler? should it go back straight to the cart or what?

Any insight, I really appreciate. Thank you in advance.

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    The only thing I can think of is outside the room put it in a ziplock bag if you have them and take it out inside the room.. and then put it back in the ziplock bag when you are finished with it.

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    At any given time we have at least several people in contact isolation on our floor at the hospital. When we do accu-checks, we use the plastic bag that holds the gown as a cover for the accu-check, and then when we are done, we wipe down the meter with antiseptic wipes. As far as inhalers, those would be kept in the patient's room, and their medications are kept in the med room instead of in their locked cabinet in the room.

    I'm not sure the protocol with a locked med cart, but I'm sure that you could ask someone for help at your SNF. Surely there has to be a routine protocol set in place.

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    I work on an ID unit - we leave inhalers in the room, but our patients are adults and generally with it, so if wither of those aren't the case for your patient the ziplock bag idea's not bad.

    We also have dedicated glucometers, that stay in iso rooms for the duration of the admission. As we're also an endo unit we have eight units for 32 patients, which may well not be the case for you. When we have to use a non-iso meter on an iso patient we put the glucometer into a plastic bag and don't handle the machine itself with contaminated gloves. That saves the machine being exposed to cleaning products like Milton's more often than absolutely necessary.

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