Risk of C. diff in hospitals? Blame it on the hand sanitizer
Hand sanitizers are everywhere. You probably have one in your car/purse/office/etc. Hand sanitizers are also present in hospitals and used by healthcare providers before or after attending to patients.
While certainly convenient and handy (no pun intended), hand sanitizers do not kill C. difficile. C. diff is the “most common infection acquired by patients while they are in the hospital. More than three million C. difficile infections occur in hospitals in the United States each year. After a stay of only two days in the hospital, 10% of patients will develop infection with C. difficile (Lee, 2010).”
If hand sanitizers don’t kill C. diff bacterium, what should doctors and nurses do?
“Only handwashing works in this scenario,” says Dr. Will Sawyer, family physician and founder of the Henry the Hand Foundation. This means the hospital must take steps to encourage handwashing among all employees in order to truly commit to patient safety.
“Changing the hospital work environment to a ‘culture of safety’ is a bold step, but necessary in order to make the strides we are capable of in the healthcare arena to benefit our patients,” Dr. Sawyer adds. “We CAN prevent C. difficile in health care settings!”
Do you work in a hospital and are interested in the Champion Handwasher Hospital Campaign? Please check out our Champion Handwasher Hospital Campaign
What do you think about healthcare providers using hand sanitizer in-between seeing patients? What could be the reasons for that habit? Let us know YOUR OPINIONS in the comments below!
(Source: Lee, Dennis. (2010). Clostridium Difficile Colitis. MedicineNet.com. http://www.medicinenet.com/clostridium_difficile_colitis/article.htm)
