Healthcare-associated Infection

Patients who are suffering from contagious infections are often nursed in isolation using a procedure known as barrier nursing. These techniques have developed to protect the hospital environment from contamination with dangerous pathogens. Anything that comes into direct contact with the patient is considered infective and must be sterilised before being returned to general use. If this proves impossible then the item must be incinerated before disposal. Personnel attending the infectious patient wear special protective clothing, masks and gloves.

The most vulnerable patients may also benefit from the lessons learned in the development of barrier nursing. Those people who are most at risk of acquiring infections while in hospital, organ transplant recipients on immunosuppressive therapy, for example, can be protected from infection by reverse barrier nursing. Items must be sterilised before coming into contact with the patient and in these cases, personnel wear protective clothing to prevent their microflora from contaminating their patient: an event that may lead to the establishment of a life-threatening infection. All these precautions help to protect patients from infection. The most important single measure in protecting any patient from healthcare-associated infection is to observe adequate hand washing particularly when hospital personnel move from one patient to another. In some people, carriers, pathogens that cause healthcare-associated infections may be present as part of the commensal flora. These carriers may act as a reservoir for infections that may be life-threatening in other patients. More often than not, the vectors for such infections are the inadequately washed hands of medical personnel.