Chlorhexidine Baths

[ckh23]

Hey everyone. Our facility just implemented chlorhexidine baths in all the ICU's after a trial on one unit. I have read the research and it seems to indicate a decrease in VRE, MRSA, CRBSI, etc. I'm just curious if any others out there are doing the same and seeing any decrease in the rates of infection.

[nikkicoliCCRN]

The last place I worked in we washed everyone in CHG every morning. They actually took all the other soap supplies away. It was a little extreme in my opinion. I was wondering if anyone has ready any studies about resistance or skin issues. I would think that CHG would be very drying to the skin?

[ICUenthusiast]

They do. And my hospital just won the national award for having no central line blood stream infections or ventilator aquired pneumonia for the last two Years - pushing three in our 4 ICUs. I swear by them.

Where do you work, I wanna know for future reference when I start looking to move onto bigger and better things!

[SingaporeICU]

We started daily chlorhexidine bath for patients with MRSA, VRE or acinetobacter positive. It is also part of the standard pre-op procedure for all patients.

[nikkicoliCCRN]

They do. And my hospital just won the national award for having no central line blood stream infections or ventilator aquired pneumonia for the last two Years - pushing three in our 4 ICUs. I swear by them.

I'm not trying to be cynical, but I worked in an ICU that had no VAP for 2 years. I also believe that they were very good at manipulating the numbers. I have a hard time believing facilities that make this claim without seeing the exclusion numbers. Also curious to see what other things are in place for CBLI and VAP? Find it hard to believe that just the CHG is making the difference. If someone at your facility has written this up I would love to see the data. This would be great evidence based practice.

[clmsngrl82]

We just recently finished a trial of using the foam kind out of a pump bottle or the liquid from small blue bottles. It did not show a decrease in the number of infections for us and so our unit went back to our regular soap baths. We have not had a VAP in over 2 years, but we have had some CLBIs.

[HannaJo]

Really? Ours are kept in the warmer on our unit.. I'm guessing this is a no no?

[ICUJMB]

I have a question. Our facility has not adopted this yet but what is the protocol for giving the bath correctly? What areas do you wash? Do you rinse the solution off? I see how effective this practice is but I have not seen in the articles how to do the bath correctly. Thank You!

[kayern]

We bathe everyone who has a central line with clorhexidine washcloths. Our institutions CLABS rate plummeted. We also use a clorhexidine product to "scrub the hub" on the ports. Clorhexidine baths for all pre-op patients as well.

[munnin1977]

Our ICU started using clorhexidine wipes about 1.5 years ago and we have seen a substantial decrease in CLABSI. We have a warmer for ours.

[*LadyNurse*]

Our facility has implemented the policy that any patient that has a central line access must be bathed with chlorhexidine to prevent cental line associated infections.

[Anoetos, BSN, RN]

Same as LadyNurse, We use it for prevention of catheter associated infections. Anyone getting a central line gets two chlorhexidine baths, one the night before and one the morning of, their procedure

We're following EBP on this.

The soap comes in a tube, it's purple.

[kayern]

"Same as LadyNurse, We use it for prevention of catheter associated infections. Anyone getting a central line gets two chlorhexidine baths, one the night before and one the morning of, their procedure"

And.......we require daily clorhexidine baths every day the line is in (EBP) and our catheter associated infections are substantially below benchmark.