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In This Issue:
June is Hand Hygiene Awareness Month at BWH
One of the most important things health care providers can do to protect patients is wash their hands.
“While caring for patients, our hands can become contaminated with billions of bacteria that are too small to be visibly apparent but potentially lethal to the next patient we touch,” said Deborah Yokoe, MD, of Infectious Disease.
According to experts, when resistant organisms like MRSA are spread from patient to patient, the hands of health care providers are the most frequent mode of transmission.
“By adhering to hand hygiene protocol, we can reduce infection rates and protect our patients from the spread of diseases like MRSA and VRE,” Yokoe said. “Alcohol-based gels, such as Purell, can kill 99.9 percent of the bacteria on your hands.”
For more information on BWH’s hand hygiene policy, visit www.bwhpikenotes.org and click on Compliance Corner on the Staff Resources drop down menu.
Editor’s Note: Atul Gawande, MD, a BWH surgeon, addresses the importance of hand hygiene in his latest book, “Better.” In the following excerpt, Gawande describes his tour of the hospital with Susan Marino of Infection Control and Deborah Yokoe, MD, of Infectious Disease, proving the importance of every provider cleaning their hands every time.
At one point during my tour with Yokoe and Marino, we walked through a regular hospital unit. And I finally began to see the ward the way they do. Flowing in and out of the patients’ rooms were physical therapists, patient care assistants, nurses, nutritionists, residents, students. Some were good about washing. Some were not. Yokoe pointed out that three of the eight rooms had bright yellow precaution signs because of patients inside with MRSA or VRE. Only then did I realize we were on the floor of one of my own patients. One of those signs hung on his door.
He was 62 years old and had been in the hospital for almost three weeks. He had arrived in shock from another hospital, where an operation had gone awry. I performed an emergency splenectomy for him and then had to go back in again when the bleeding still didn’t stop. He made it through, though. Three days after admission, he was recovering slowly but steadily. Initial surveillance cultures were completely negative for resistant organisms. New cultures ten days after admission, however, came back positive for both MRSA and VRE. A few days after that, he developed fevers up to 102 degrees. His blood pressure began dropping. His heart rate climbed. He was septic. His central line—his lifeline for nutrition because he was unable to eat—had become infected, and we had to take it out.
Until that moment, when I stood there looking at the sign on his door, it had not occurred to me that I might have given him that infection. But the truth is I may have. One of us certainly did.