research in nursing discussion board

Danielle

Recently, infection and cross-contamination has been a huge issue in the hospital that I work in, specifically on my floor.  During our morning huddles, the charge nurse explains that nurses should be capping all lines, cleaning all vital sign machines after each patient visit, doing urinary catheter care. As I read in an article, the most common hospital-acquired infections are respiratory tract infections and urinary tract infections (Cristina, et al., 2021). The point of doing all these steps which are not extra steps, they are steps that should be done all day every day, is to lower the instance of infection and cross-contamination. When I began working in the hospital, I was in shock that infection and cross-contamination are such a huge problem on my floor. The nurse's response to the increasing infection numbers was that they are understaffed and that they do not always have time to do absolutely every little thing they can to prevent infection. So I decided that every time I go into a patient's room, I would check the lines and make sure they are capped, clean all the vitals machines with sani cloths and I would make sure that urinary catheter care is done for all of the patients that have a catheter. The authors in the article I read also mentioned that geriatric patients are usually most at risk to acquire infection and this is because they are often being transported from one setting to another and from one person to another (Cristina, et al., 2021). When a nurse suspects some kind of infection, it is their job to notify the charge nurse so that the charge nurse can keep tabs on that patient and make sure they are getting the care they need to remove the infection.