Q. I heard your radio show on infection control last week while driving to the hospital to visit my wife. Later that day, because of your show, I observed the following: A nurse arrived to hang another bag of antibiotics. She washed her hands but before she could complete the task, her phone rang. She pulled it out of her pocket and began talking, stepping into the hall to finish her conversation.
When she returned to the room, she dropped her phone in her pocket and hung the antibiotics without washing her hands. It happened so quickly, I did not intervene, but it is frightening.
A. Cell phones are a potential source of contamination. A British study recently found that one phone in six was contaminated with fecal bacteria. The nurse should have washed after the call.
Infections in hospitals, nursing homes and outpatient surgical centers cause over 100,000 deaths each year. We recently received a heart-breaking story from a reader:
“I watched as a nurse scratched an IV site with his fingernail. Supposedly he was removing dried blood from my 89-year-old father’s arm. By that afternoon, my dad’s forearm turned red, and by the next day he was in excruciating pain. He died a few weeks later of a MRSA infection. He was healthy when he went into the hospital for observation while drugs were initiated to shrink his prostate.”
Patients must be vigilant. Hundreds of thousands die each year from adverse drug reactions, misdiagnoses and blood clots in addition to infection. You can learn more about protecting yourself or your loved ones in our new book, Top Screwups Doctors Make and How to Avoid Them.
