Clostridium difficile, or C. diff, is one tough bug.
A study looked at how the bacteria is spread (via Hospital Medicine Quick Hits) throughout the hospital during an outbreak.
Disturbingly, it was found in 15% of non-isolation patient rooms, 31% of physician work areas, and 21% of portable medical equipment, including pulse oximeters, medication carts, and bar code scanners.
The moral? Wash your hands frequently, especially in the setting of a C. difficile outbreak. Alcohol-based sanitizers aren’t effective in killing the spores. You need old-fashioned soap and water.
Related posts:
- Clostridium difficile infection is spreading from the hospital to the community
- How to tell doctors to wash their hands
- Caffeinated soap
- Poll: Should obese patients pay more for ambulance transport to the hospital?
- Safety-net hospital financial woes
- Hospital scrubs and lab coats are dirty, infested with germs, and can kill
- Patient burns from a hospital visit, and fires in the operating room
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{ 1 comment }
Interesting that they found the following:
“including 9 of 29 (31%) in physician work areas, 1 of 10 (10%) in nurse work areas”
I would think with the greater chance of exposure the nurse work areas would be more contaminated. Or is it that docs just don’t wash or gown up like they should?
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