Does your ICU use CHG wipes for bathing patients?

meepmeep · May 23, 2016

In the last couple of years, our medicine wards only used them for bathing MRSA pts and they are used for the pre-operative wash before OR for surgical patients. Otherwise all med-surg wards just use the no rinse spray cleanser. But all our critical care units use only CHG wipes for bathing with the barrier cream cloths for peri-care.

sapphire18 · May 26, 2016

All pts in the ICU where I work are required to get a CHG wipe "bath" every 24 hours, we don't have basins or any other kind of soap.

Tbutbu · Jun 23, 2016

We use them daily especially before a patient goes to the OR

Penelope_Pitstop, BSN, RN · Jun 23, 2016

Not ICU anymore, but we started the mandatory CHG baths in early 2014. Mid Atlantic, 1000 bed level 1 trauma teaching facility.

sammiesmom · Jun 25, 2016

My facility does. I like it. It's faster, better and per EBP reduces infection rates :)

delphine22 · Dec 1, 2016

The wipes can be used to also clean off foley caths and any tube/line/wire resting on the patient and extending out from the patient.

Please note, according to Bard the CHG wipes or any CHG cleanser are NOT to be used on Foley catheter tubing as it can cause corrosion or remove the silver antimicrobial coating. They recommend castile soap wipes or their own proprietary peri care wipes (plain soap and water is OK too).

William2 · Dec 3, 2016

The only issue with the CHG wipes is if your patient is being cooled via therapeutic hypothermia for say cardiac arrest. If you bathe during or say after therapy is complete exposed and leftover glue material from the body cooling pads will clump up with interaction of CHG. If anyone has done this or just simply tried to wash off that glue normally it is a $%^& to get off the skin. So we use regular wash clothes with non CHG soap. That next night we'll do CHG wipes.

The wipes are very drying to the skin as well especially in sensitive areas. Say I work 6 on with the same patient I will do a regular bath with soap and water at least once it gives their skin a break in my opinion. You can lotion them up really well but them wipes still dry out the skin. Many don't do it because wipes are "quicker". Laziness SMH...

FutureRNArk · Dec 7, 2016

We do not do CHG baths at my facility, except for patients who are expected to have an orthopedic surgery or CABG, or with known colonization with MRSA or VRE. Studies have actually been mixed on whether there are any benefits of using CHG baths compared to regular baths. There have been studies that show that CHG baths cause resistant bacteria that are harder to treat. So at my facility, we still do the soap and water bed bath. All patients in the units get a bath once a day unless they refuse. Vented patients are bathed at night, non-vented are bathed during the day.

Nina90 · Dec 16, 2016

We have been doing CHG baths on my unit since I was hired 2 years ago. It's required that a patient gets a CHG bath every 24 hours regardless if they have a central line or not (the procedure on Tele is only those with a central line).

Our CHG baths are a joke, however. We have the wipes that come two in a pack. They leave the patient's skin sticky and no matter how much education provided to staff I frequently see RNs and NTs wiping patient's in the peri-area with them - drives me nuts!

I've been in a hospital where the CHG came in a bottle that was diluted with water. The bath seemed more like an actual bath compared to my current hospital's way.

Nurse_JackieVA, BSN, RN · Dec 20, 2016

On my old unit in CA all patients received daily CHG baths. We were told to stop using soap/water. When I moved to VA, the unit I worked on said to only give CHG baths to pts with central lines everyone else soap/water.