I think we’ve been going about things the wrong way.
Remember back as a kid in school and they would have us brush our teeth, we’d eat this red candy-like
nasty tasting thing and whatever places we missed turned our teeth red?
Why can’t we do this with germs?
Think about it … flu germs, cold germs, nasty
bacteria, anything. If we could SEE it,
we might be able to combat it.
As a Mom, I'd LOVE something like this in my home. I could see where the germs are lurking. My kids do what my mom used to call, "A lick and a promise" when asked to wipe a cabinet or sweep a floor. If they could actually SEE the germs they missed, maybe they'd be more helpful in wanting to join my crusade. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm delusional.
As a Mother to several kids with special needs, two of which are immunocompromised, I find it strange how people think nothing of going out in public while quite ill. They almost wear it as a badge of honor, "Look at me out here doing stuff while I'm sick as a dog!" I need to be able to see these germs a mile away.
As a Mother to several kids with special needs, two of which are immunocompromised, I find it strange how people think nothing of going out in public while quite ill. They almost wear it as a badge of honor, "Look at me out here doing stuff while I'm sick as a dog!" I need to be able to see these germs a mile away.
As a Professional, I deal in the world of vascular access and general health
care concerns. We know that hospital acquired infections are a huge loss of money
for a hospital, not to mention complications for the patient including morbidity
and mortality. We also know that simple
things like good hand hygiene can drastically help reduce these
infections.
4 years ago, one such bug got into my son’s IV and nearly
killed him. Any parent who has seen
their 2 year old in septic shock fighting for their life will not take these
bugs lightly. Since then, I’ve been
asking questions of how we can make system wide changes for people to do the
right thing like wash hands, scrub the hub and increase general education for
clinicians as well as the general population.
Today it hit me … make the germs visible! Then we could SEE
which clinicians are “Typhoid Mary”, which surfaces are teeming with bacteria
and which instruments haven’t been properly cleaned. We could also visibly see what chemicals kill
these germs so we can know the most effective treatments.
It’s estimated by the Center for Disease Control (CDC) that there
were 722,000 hospital acquired infections in 2011 (the latest updated source I
could find). And about 75,000 die
from these infections. Read the
following article if you dare. But you’ve been warned, you will feel the need to scrub after.
For those who would just rather the down and dirty, it says
1 in 25 are estimated to get a hospital acquired infection each year. For those of us who are frequent flyers, or
who have immunocompromised loved ones, this is particularly scary. My son has had several in his short 6 years of life.
For comparison, here are some breast cancer statistics. http://www.breastcancer.org/symptoms/understand_bc/statistics
Basically it estimates there are just under 300,000 cases of
breast cancer per year and about 40,000 deaths.
That’s horrible. One death is too
many. And I’m thankful lots of attention
is being placed on this epidemic.
What’s shocking to me is that basically NO emphasis is being
placed on these hospital acquired infections and the numbers are more than double
for getting an infection and almost double the rate of deaths. But instead of highlighting the infection
rates and need for system wide improvement, it’s virtually a “dirty little
secret.” No pink ribbons, no football players going pink, no one talking about it at all.
Another difference between these hospital acquired
infections and breast cancer is that with the breast cancer, there is currently
no known cure or preventative. There IS
for these infections. Which makes each
death just that much more painful in my opinion.
The good news is ... there is a group working towards addressing these issues. AVA and the AVA Foundation (www.http://avainfo.org) are working collaboratively with governmental agencies, medical organizations, schools of nursing, the private sector and patient advocacy groups to help shed awareness of and solutions to the problem. Don't be surprised that you'll be hearing more about these infections in the near future.
We need your help!
So back to my idea … anyone know how to make germs
visible? It could save about 75,000 lives each
year. One could be yours or someone you love.
