Hand Hygiene In Health Care

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Recommended: 4 types of isolation precautions

Health promotion is very important, especially when individuals are in the hospital. When a person is in the hospital and is ill, they can sometimes become depressed and have no interest or desire to clean themselves up or brush their teeth, in instances such as this offer to assist your patient in cleaning up and if you have time talk with them to get their mind off of their illness. This concept certainly fits the older adult category due to “their cognitive response to being hospitalised; their limited ability to self-care; and lack of nursing engagement with the family caregiver. Registered nurses can offer simultaneous assessment and intervention to prevent or mitigate hospital-acquired complications. However, it is known that when demand …show more content…

Perry and Potter (2011) discuss different precautions that are used within healthcare settings, first and foremost when fighting the spread of infection is standard precautions. Standard precautions should be used by everyone in healthcare, no matter what setting they are working in, this consists of hand hygiene in between patient contact. Different types of “isolation” will be implemented as needed for different viruses or bacterial infections that could be transmitted between patients or staff. Contact precautions will be implemented if the patient has an infection that could be transmitted through either direct or indirect contact such as MRSA; direct contact is when you’re physically in contact with the patient and indirect contact is when you come in contact with inanimate object in which the patient has been in contact. (Potter and Perry, 2011). Education and training of staff on how to use personal protective equipment properly is vital, as it is key to preventing the spread of infection beyond its original …show more content…

Also, if PPE is used correctly but hand hygiene is not performed properly upon leaving the patient’s room, the infection can be spread between patients and staff. Secondary health promotion focuses on screening, for MRSA infections the type of screening that would be done is a skin swab or swab of the nares that is sent to the lab to be tested for growth of the MRSA bacteria. Oftentimes, this screening is performed while in the emergency department to determine whether or not the patient has MRSA upon admission to the hospital, so that they can be placed into a private room on contact precautions. (Upshaw-Owens & Bailey, 2012). In order to prevent the spread of infection from one patient to another or to staff, it is crucial that the infection be properly identified as quickly as possible so that the patient may begin to be treated for the specific infection, as well as allowing the proper isolation precautions to be implemented. Staff that are among the care team for the patient will need to properly document the type of infection as well as the precautions being taken to prevent the spread of the

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