Nursing health and patient safety

Fiona59 · Jun 27, 2007

Do you have short/long term disability coverage or will you be depending on EI sick coverage?

We've been talking about MRSA and c-diff among staff a lot lately. Our hospital policy is to swab anyone with any contact with a health facility upon admission for those bugs. Half the staff is convinced they are MRSA carriers. We've been wondering if workers comp would cover us if we were??

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Jun 27, 2007

Half the staff is convinced they are MRSA carriers. We've been wondering if workers comp would cover us if we were??

Only half?? In our PICU we're ALL convinced we're carriers. It's an occupational hazard; handwashing, handwashing, handwashing people!

I know this is off-topic, but you might find it interesting. Our QI coordinator (can I have that job??!) and our NP came up with this brilliant isolation plan for all those nasties that we don't need positive pressure or closed door for... only neither of them has worked at the bedside in about a lifetime, so they didn't think of how it would actually work... The plan was to have a "clean" area closest the door where the patient's supply cart and chart would be kept. This area would be delineated by caution tape on the floor. On the dirty side of the tape the nurse would wear PPE that would be removed and hands washed prior to crossing the tape to the clean side. However, the hand sanitizer was on the clean side of the tape and the sink on the dirty side... far over on the dirty side. The computer, if the room has one, was also on the dirty side. In practice the nurse was donning and disrobing a thousand times a shift, the laundry hampers overflowed, the charting was haphazard and meds were often late. One kid has a complex dressing change several times a day. One of the primaries asked how she was supposed to set up her supplies on the clean side, move them all over to the dirty side then cross back to the clean side if she'd forgotten anything. The whole thing was scrapped when the hospital complained about our laundry bill.

Fiona59 · Jun 27, 2007

Sounds kinda like our set up. Clean supplies kept outside in the hallway on a bedside cabinet. In you go gowned, masked, gloved, we leave a stethoscope and other supplies in the room prior to admission. Then we have a co-worker write the vitals outside the door.

What annoys me the most are the family members that think they don't need to follow infection control procedures or wait until you're just stepping out of the room to ask for something causing the need to regown etc. When a co-worker would have fetched and passed it in.

On the original topic, nada...

Pediatric Critical Care Columnist · Jun 27, 2007

It might have had a chance if our patients weren't intubated and ventilated, with multiple central lines, a dozen or more infusions that we may or may not be titrating, complex wound care, q1h vitals, frequent gases and all the rest of the fun and games associated with PICU. As it was, we were spending more time getting into and out of our PPE than we were providing care.

I hear you about the families!! What makes them think that they're impervious to pathogenic organisms, or that it's okay for them to carry them around wherever they go?