Guide to Hospital Acquired Infections Brought to You by The MATER PRIVATE HOSPITAL.
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In general, healthy people are at a low risk of contracting a HAI like MRSA or C. difficile, including pregnant women and children, but if you are going into hospital there are several things you can do to protect yourself, and reduce your chances of contracting an infection in hospital.
Before going into hospital start using a bactericidal soap and shampoo and continue while there, always washing or cleaning your hands after visits to the bathroom and before/after meals and wearing shoes or slippers when walking around. If you feel that the area around your hospital bed looks unclean, insist that it is cleaned.
As a patient you have the right to ask whether your doctor or nurse has washed their hands before they touch you, and you can also help protect yourself by not touching your wounds or any damaged skin and regularly washing your hands to prevent self-infection. Try not to get too close to other patients and avoid all contact with other people's wounds or with material contaminated from wounds prior to being taken for surgery and never use the toilets if they are unclean - go and report them to staff.
Treatment of MRSA and C difficile
If you would like to know about
MRSA treatment, or
C.difficile treatment, the following information will be of interest.
If a patient has suspected MRSA, or an SA infection, either a swab from the patient's skin or nose, or a sample of urine or spit will be examined. In private hospitals all patients admitted to private hospitals from another healthcare facility will be screened for MRSA (a swab from the nose usually) and if the patient is an MRSA carrier the procedure may be deferred or the patient will be nursed in strict isolation to reduce the possibility of transmission to healthcare staff or other patients.
If SA is found more laboratory tests will be done to see if the methicillin antibiotic will kill the bacteria but if methicillin doesn't work, the bacteria will be identified as MRSA and further tests will establish which drugs should be used to treat the patient.
It is difficult to diagnose C. difficile on symptoms alone so a sample of diarrhoeal faeces is tested for the presence of the C. difficile toxins, providing a result within a few hours. C. difficile can be treated with specific antibiotics and most cases make a full recovery.
The Health Protection Agency report a risk of relapse in 20-30% of patients and in these cases other treatments may be tried including pro-biotic (good bacteria) treatments with the aim of re-establishing the balance of flora in the gut.
The HPA surveillance programme showed that type 027 is the second most common strain of 881 samples received and three other strains (106, 027, and 001) were in roughly equal proportions across England and accounting for approximately 75% of the cases detected during the sampling period. The strain of C.difficile 027 can be treated with antibiotics, as can the other types.
Once someone has recovered from C. difficile they are not a risk to others even if they continue to carry C. difficile in their stool provided they observe the normal personal hygiene precautions and always wash their hands after visits to the bathroom.
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