but coordinating the screening
and the prescribing is labor
intensive for providers, adds
more clinic appointments for
patients and could contribute
to the growing issue of antibi-
otic resistance. Plus, there's no
guarantee that carriers who
are prescribed mupirocin will
comply with the required
application regimen.
For those reasons, there's a
growing movement to assume
all patients are carriers when
they arrive at your facility on the day of surgery and treat their nares
with povidone-iodine or an alcohol-based nasal sanitizer.
At Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, Pa., pre-op staff
members weren't always treating patients' nares with povidone-iodine
simply because nurses had to walk to a different unit to get it, which
wasn't always possible. The opportunity to apply povidone-iodine to
patients before they went into the OR was therefore sometimes lost.
The simple step of storing the prepping agent at the point of use
solved the issue, says Mary Mahabee-Betts, MSN, RN, CNOR, the peri-
operative quality and patient safety nurse manager at Temple.
3. Hand hygiene
Ms. Perri reminds her clients to clean their hands before and after each
patient contact, after gloves are removed and after contacting high-
touch surfaces such as computer keyboards.
Temple doubled the number of sanitizing gel dispensers throughout
8 4 • O U T PA T I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E • N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 9
• KEEP YOUR NOSE CLEAN Nasal decolonization is one of the latest
and most effective ways to reduce the rates of SSIs.
Pamela
Bevelhymer,
RN,
BSN,
CNOR
