Dueling the 'superbug' - The Orange County Register

News of a drug-resistant "superbug" rampaging through hospitals and nursing homes has patients scared ? with good reason.

There is no proven way to effectively treat some types of the bacteria known as Carbapenem Resistant Enterobacteriaceae, or CRE, which killed seven people recently outside Washington, D.C. Officials are concerned about the bug leaping from hospitals to the general public.

Hoag Hospitals and medical centers throughout Orange County are taking a multipronged approach to identify, isolate and stop the spread of these antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

So far our efforts are working, but we need your help.

While Hoag employs a host of elaborate techniques and screening programs to prevent infection for resistant organisms, nothing can accomplish what you can in one simple step: Limit your use of antibiotics.

Consider your illness before demanding a prescription. Antibiotics treat bacterial infections ? period.

The next approach is equally easy: Keep clean. Superbugs may make a mockery of powerful antibiotics, but they're no match for hand sanitizers or plain soap and water.

Hoag takes hand hygiene very seriously. One aspect of our program includes the "secret shopper." These undercover doctors and nurses monitor whether fellow health-care providers wash their hands when entering and leaving patient rooms and care areas.

To ensure clean patient rooms, supervisors randomly select rooms of recently discharged patients and secretly "tag" several high-touch areas (bedrails, phones) with a powder visible only under black light. After the room is cleaned, the supervisor then sweeps the room with a black light. If the powder is still there, the person cleaning the room is retrained and the room is recleaned.

The superbug may have found a way around our drugs, but with our diligence to provide the safest care and your participation in best practices to prevent infection, we're confident it won't defeat us.

Source: http://www.ocregister.com/articles/resistant-497966-room-care.html

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