Sooo..what's in your isolation??

I work in a small to med size hospital and YES im so tired of isolation. Its nothing for us to have 4-5 at a time anymore. And they arent all coming from nursing homes. Some of these patients are coming in from home.

Ive worked as a nurse for 13 years and it IS getting worse,, and im sure it isnt going to get better.

Is it me or has there been a MAJOR breakout lately in MRSA, VRE, C-DIFF, you name it - we got it??? It seems like everyother pt I have been caring for lately has some terrible bug that requires isolation. I swear I should stop wearing scrubs and just buy isolation gowns. Has medicine just evolved so much that we are keeping people alive too long?? I work at a medium size hospital - I can only imagine what it's like at the big facilities. I have heard some traveling nurses say that they have worked at hospitals where there is an entire floor devoted to infectious diseases. Does this freak anyone else out? :uhoh21:

I am a nursing student and yes! there has to have been some kind of breakout!!!! I have had to cover up soooo many times to deal with patients that I wonder whether I should leave my house covered up already. In the hospital in which I do my clinicals, they are constantly running out of beds because there are so many pts in isolation status. It is usually MRSA, too. I don't get it.

We've seen a LOT of MRSA over the last year or two at my rural facility, and my own child had c-diff last fall.

I work in a large facility, and we seem to have waves of it- worse some weeks than others. Or, we'll have pts for a while (weeks upon weeks) and then end up with it.

I'm starting to think all of us (pts and staff) have something, we just haven't ID'd everyone yet!

on our floor most everyone is in isolation... MRSA, c-diff being the most serious I guess, but they also isolate kids with pneumonia, the flu, RSV, rotavirus, etc. our floor gets most all the contagious stuff, it's rare to have patients on standard isolation. but, seems like most people just wear gloves, or gloves and masks, unless they are going to be picking up the kid; and I think there were only 2 cases of nosocomial infection definitely documented in the hospital last year (I don't know if there were more undocumented or unknown...) The other nurses that have been there longer than I have, say that it is the cellulitis w/MRSA that seems to be increasing, but not so much w/the others.

I always love it when you are taking care of a patient for a shift or two, then have a few days off, then come back to work to find they are in isolation for whatever...now you gown and glove up, but two days ago, you just went in there and did your normal stuff.

I always love it when you are taking care of a patient for a shift or two then have a few days off, then come back to work to find they are in isolation for whatever...now you gown and glove up, but two days ago, you just went in there and did your normal stuff.[/quote']

Ain't it the truth?!? This happens ALL THE TIME!! I have just gotten to the point where I will hardly do anything without gloves on anymore! I took care of a nursing home resident the other day who had MRSA in the urine, blood and sputum. He was hacking up the most terrible looking stuff!! He did have a foley thank goodness, but man oh man, they will have to fumigate that room before anyone else will be able to have it. Sad, sad.

MRSA, C-diff and URI's seem to be our trend right now. They closed the main dining room and everyone in the facility is taking meals in their rooms for now. They put signs on the doors about the flu outbreak too, so that visitors who aren't feeling well don't even come in the facility.