How can I protect myself against VRE, ORSA, etc.?
Question:
Answers:
Your hospital will have a protocol for the care of patients with MRSA and/or VRE. Of course, in the ER (more so than other parts of the hospital), you'll come across many, many patients who have MRSA/VRE and haven't yet been diagnosed.
That's why, in hospital, staff are told to always use Standard Precautions/Routine Practices. The basis of this is appropriate hand hygiene. You HAVE to make sure you are performing hand hygiene after each patient contact. Your hospital will also have a policy regarding hand hygiene- you should review this. Alcohol based hand rubs are an excellent option for hand hygiene as long as there is no visible soiling on your hands. If there is, it makes the alcohol ineffective, and your hands will not be cleaned.
And to clarify, you should NOT always wear gloves. This is one reason while organisms are spread throughout healthcare facilities. Staff wear the gloves thinking they are protecting themselves and then don't change them appropriately. As well, if you wear gloves, you have to do hand hygiene prior to applying, and immediately after removal of them. Finally, gloves are not impervious (i.e., things can pass through them). There was a great article in the American Journal of Infection Control that described the wholes in single use gloves, and related the wholes were larger than the size of the HIV, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C viruses. This does not mean you will get these conditions ever when wearing gloves (you have to have enough blood and other right conditions for that to occur); it means the gloves do allow things to go through, and they do not provide the protection staff think they do.
It will ALWAYS be better to wear glove NO MATTER what Happens. Do everything you CAN to help prevent All disease.
Did you encounter people who got sick working in a hospital? If you are concern, there's anti-bacteria soaps.
Unfortunately, most of us ,and I'm not just talking about people who work in the ER, are already colonized with MRSA(no such thing as ORSA). If patients come in with these multidrug resistant bacteria they are supposed to be on contact isolation so you may want to check with the infection control officer at your hospital to see why this isn't being done. I wouldn't worry about it too much though. For all the bad press, in reality these bugs are fairly wimpy in healthy people and are mainly a source of concern for sick hospitalized patients or for nursing home patients. To answer your question unless you are coming into direct contact with fluid or secretions ( i know yuk!) the sanitizer is fine.
More Questions & Answers...