Hi, I'm Meris. And in this video, we're going to be talking about hospital-acquired infections and
hand hygiene. I'm going to be following along using our Nursing Fundamentals flashcards.
These are available on our website, LevelUpRN.com, if you want to get
some for yourself. And if you already have them and you're following along with me, I'm
starting on card number 46. So let's get started. Okay. So first up, we're talking about different
types of hospital-acquired infections. You'll see a whole list here of different types.
But what I actually want to draw your eye to is what is in the italicized definition at the top
here. We have two different terms that I want you to be familiar with, nosocomial and iatrogenic.
So nosocomial means originating in the hospital. So, for instance, I go to the
hospital to have surgery. I don't have MRSA, but while I'm in the hospital, I acquire MRSA.
First of all, that's a hospital-acquired infection, but second of all,
you may hear that called nosocomial. Another word you want to know is iatrogenic.
So iatrogenic means coming from a procedure. So for instance, I go to the hospital. I
don't have a urinary tract infection. They place an indwelling Foley catheter in me,
and I get a catheter-associated urinary tract infection, a CAUTI.
That is now a CAUTI, we can call it that, but we can also call that an iatrogenic
infection because it came from a procedure or intervention. Very important terms to know.
Okay. So let's move on to how to prevent these. So I'm looking at card number 47 right now.
Very important. There's a whole list here. I'm not going to go through all of them. But you
will see that the thing on this card that is bold and red, meaning very important, is hand hygiene.
Proper hand hygiene is the most important step in the prevention of nosocomial infections. Another
thing we can do is room cohorting, meaning that we put patients together based on their condition.
So if I have two patients with MRSA, for instance, they should go together versus
both of them being given a room with someone who doesn't have MRSA. That doesn't make any sense.
So make sure that we are cohorting, putting together, based on diagnosis.
We also want to post signs outside the door if there's any sort of transmission precautions.
We're going to want to put PPE outside the door and have disposable equipment inside
the room so that once the patient has been discharged, we can get rid of that equipment
and not spread those germs to other people. We're also going to want to limit our invasive
procedures. So if I don't need to start an IV, let's not do that.
That's another opportunity for infection, right? If I don't need to start an indwelling catheter,
let's not do that. We want to limit those invasive procedures and only do it when we absolutely must.
And then, of course, we're going to want to do whatever kind of
maintenance of invasive things that needs to be done. This is going to be per facility policy.
But things like changing IV tubing, IV sites, performing catheter care,
giving proper care to wound drains, all of those things are going to be very important
for minimizing your patient's risk for a nosocomial infection.
And lastly, we are going to be talking about hand hygiene. So you'll see here on card 48,
it sounds super simple. But we actually have a lot of bold and red content on this page along with a
super important key point. So let's break it down. There's two ways to do hand hygiene.
One is soap and water. And one is with an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
Now, this is what you will see most commonly in the hospital because we don't have time
to stop and fully wash our hands and make sure that we're doing a good job when we
enter and leave a patient's room. It's just not feasible. So we do have hand sanitizer.
Very important to understand when we should use soap and water though. Soap and water should be
used instead of sanitizer anytime we are about to eat food, after having gone to the bathroom.
If my hands are visibly dirty, if I can see dirt on my hands, I need to use soap and water.
And then very importantly, if I am caring for a patient with infectious diarrhea, I've got to be
using soap and water, not hand sanitizer. Okay, so that is it for hospital-acquired
infections and hand hygiene. I hope that review was helpful. If it was,
please go ahead and like this video. If you have anything else to add or maybe a funny
story or some way that you remember things, please put it in the comments. I would love to see that.
My next video is going to be super important. It is on donning and doffing your personal protective
equipment and the different types of isolation and transmission precautions, what you need for that.
Super-duper important, so you're going to want to subscribe to the channel to make
sure you're the first one to know when that posts. Thanks so much and happy studying!
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