Hospitals, Perhaps The Most Dangerous Places
Hospitals are thought by most people as places where lives are saved, but no, statistics show they are one of the most dangerous places one could go to or be in.
Each day, more than 40,000 harmful and/or lethal medical errors occur, placing the patient in a worse situation than what they came in with.
According to a Y 2013 study, preventable medical errors kill around 440,000 patients annually, that is more than 10X the number of deaths caused by motor vehicle crashes
Hospitals are notorious for spreading lethal infections.
According to Y 2014 statistics by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 1 in 25 patients end up with a hospital-acquired infection. In Y 2011 alone, 75,000 people died as a result.
Medicare patients may be at even greater risk.
According to the 2011 Health Grades Hospital Quality in America Study, 1 in 9 Medicare patients developed a hospital-acquired infection.
Over the years, hospitals have been told to improve infectious control, but according to 2 new reports, the US healthcare system has failed to make any progress in solving the problem. Overall, just 6% of US hospitals receive top scores for preventing common drug-resistant infections.
As reported by NBC News: “…America’s hospitals are still teeming with infectious bacteria, including drug-resistant superbugs…One-third of hospitals rated by Consumer Reports got low scores on how well they prevent one of the worst infections, Clostridium difficile.
Many are flagship teaching hospitals, like those at Johns Hopkins University or Harvard Medical School, and… the prestigious Cleveland Clinic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laid the responsibility squarely on doctors, nurses and hospital administrators.
“Doctors are the key to stamping out superbugs. Antibiotic resistance threatens to return us to a time when a simple infection could kill,” CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden told reporters…
“These infections are not mysterious,” he said. “They’re caused by unwashed hands, rooms that are not cleaned thoroughly, overuse and misuse of antibiotics, a lack of careful hygiene in inserting catheters and other tubes, and slow detection of outbreaks…
There are clear simple steps. The hard part is to do them each and every time.”
According to a research letter published in JAMA Internal Medicine, patients also are part of the problem.
A problem can be traced back to lack of proper hand washing.
In this paper, patients were tested who went from hospitals to post-acute care facilities such as rehab centers and other long-term care facilities. Nearly 25% had some sort of drug-resistant microbe on their hands when leaving the hospital.
About 10% of these patients ended up picking up yet another drug-resistant germ while in post-acute care. Of those who tested positive for drug-resistant bacteria, 67% still had them when they were discharged, even if they never became ill from it.
So this is another Key recommendation.
Washing your hands is seen as an important infection control strategy, and one of the most important times to wash hands is when in the hospital, even if you are visiting someone and not a patient.
In this way, people minimize the risk of spreading microbes out among the general population.
According to Leah Binder, president of the Leapfrog Group, an organization that grades hospitals on patient safety: “We have to revise hand hygiene policies to include patients. One of the main strategies on hand hygiene is to make it easy to wash hands.
Most hospitals have either sinks or dispensers near the door of every room, so that it’s very easy for a provider walking in to immediately wash their hands. Do we make it easy for patients to wash their hands? I doubt it.”
Hand washing must be done correctly in order to be effective for disease control.
Simply rinsing hands with water, or giving a quick scrub with soap, is not enough to remove germs. So, to make sure that you are actually removing the germs when you wash your hands, follow these guidelines:
- Wash your hands for at least 20 secs with warm water
- Use plain soap. Antibacterial soap is completely unnecessary and could easily do more harm than good.
- Clean all the nooks and crannies of your hands, including under fingernails
- Rinse thoroughly under running water
- Use a paper towel to open the door as a protection from germs that harbor on handles
Going to the Hospital, be sure to wash your hands…
Eat healthy, Be healthy, Live lively.
HeffX-LTN
Paul Ebeling
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