Infection Control Guidelines - Essay Example

Download file to see previous pages... They undergo the threat of infection transmitted into themselves due to close proximity with the ailing patients in the hospital beds. They virtually cannot avoid contact physically or cannot avoid exposure to the bodily secretions of the patients. Even if actual infection contracted from the patients is rare, they can serve as an effective vehicle for transmission of many infections to patients who are not infected. This transmission of infection in the healthcare setting is such a problematic issue that this is termed as hospital-acquired infection that is very difficult to cure and that might result in extended stay in the hospital environment (Bischoff, W.E., Reynolds, T.M., Sessler, C.N., Edmond, M.B., and Wenzel, R.P., 2000). Aside from the economic and legal consequences, the health outcome consequences of the patients affected become perilous, and strict adherence to evidence-based guidelines would go a long way to prevent such catastrophe. These outlines were developed earlier from strategies based on observations in the hospitals or clinics. However, later on scientific researches and evidence from them laid down the guidelines of evidence-based practice for infection control. Nonetheless, the observational practices were successful to control transmission of infection in the clinical areas where care used to be delivered, and these evolved over time into principles of infection control. Over the past decade, guidelines for infection control have become evidence based, obviously as a result of advancement of research techniques. In the absence of evidence, assumptions based on experience and knowledge have driven recommendations. Unfortunately despite the fact that almost all providers have guidelines for the nurses to practice, still hospital acquired infections happen, and the blame is naturally on the nurses who handle the patients most. The nurses grow in experience and knowledge from the time they are inducted into the training programme, yet somehow some student nurses fail to comply with the guideline requirements (Boyce, J.M., 1999).
Improvement of infection control practice is a very hard act to follow, and it demands very strong commitment to reduce the incidence of healthcare associated infection. All aspects of nursing interventions and care delivery should, in fact, underpin career-long involvement in promoting and practicing the guidelines gleaned from evidence. The role of nurses in prevention and transmission of infection is pivotal, and to have things right, they must practice the learning in the practice area. The existence of unfortunate gaps between the evidence base and reality despite high-quality research points to the fact of noncompliance of nurses, specially student nurses' deficits in the standards of care. This indicates a gap between the scholarship or development of knowledge in nursing training and activity in the real setting. As a result, scholarship of discovery does not match with scholarship of application. As highly experienced, intelligent healthcare professionals, the nurses would be constantly and automatically involved in perfecting their practice understanding fully well the implications of the infection control guidelines and thereby would be consistently involved in research by exercising ...Download file to see next pagesRead More