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Home Health & Hospice Week

Industry Note:

Zero In On Patients' Infection Risks

Published on Tue Jul 26, 2011

If you want to protect your workers and patients against infections, you may want to change where you're looking. A study published in a recent American Journal of Infection Control found that "cell phones used by patients and their visitors were twice as likely to contain potentially dangerous bacteria as those of healthcare workers," states a press release on the research. The study focused on hospital patients, but the results can give home care providers food for thought on teaching patients how to limit their own infection risk. Findings: Samples from almost 40 percent of 133 patients' phones had the bacteria compared to about 21 percent of 67 healthcare workers' phones, according to the study authored by researchers at the Inonu University in Malatya, Turkey. Additionally, seven patient phones contained multidrug resistant (MDR) pathogens such as MRSA. By contrast, the testing didn't uncover any hospital employee phones that had MDR [...]
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