How to control and manage hospital acquired infection in a mental health setting - Essay Example

Those who recuperate from surgical wounds and have indwelling equipments such as catheters and intubation tubes, also have a higher chance of developing nosocomial infections if not handled properly. Nosocomial infections are hard to treat, because the frequent use of different antimicrobials in the mental facility over time has resulted to development of resistance. The mentally ill patients present with symptoms such as low blood pressure, chills, fever, and even mental confusion depending on the etiology (Shaw, 2011: 56).

Nurses working in a mental health facility face many challenges when treating patients. In some cases, because of the poor mental state or poor cognitive ability of the patient, the nurses usually get a hard time when treating them. Some patients are uncooperative and violent and pose a huge challenge to the nurses attending them. If such patients have wounds then treating such wounds becomes a huge problem and the likelihood of occurrence of nosocomial infections is high. If such patients have fall related fractures or chronic diseases, then the combination of such with the mental state of the patient, contributes significantly to a lowered immunity of the patient and the nosocomial infections get a chance to thrive.

This presents the nurses with a huge responsibility because they have to deal with three factors which are treating the first disease, handling the mental state of the patient, and treating the nosocomial infection (Beckwith, 2011: 80). Another challenge facing nurses in such a facility is resistance of drugs and the lowered immunity of the patients. The immune-compromised patients do not recover quickly, because the already low immunity finds it hard to fight infections. The continual use of drugs to control such infections makes the immunity more weakened, and development of drug resistance by the causative pathogens complicates the whole situation.

Microorganisms become more troublesome