Should I Be Worried About Getting Sick When I Go to the Hospital?
Hospitals can be scary places. Whether you’re visiting a loved one or checking yourself out, many people worry about catching intractable diseases like MRSA or picking up something nasty from other patients. Let’s talk about how realistic your chances of anything are, and what you can do to reduce your risk.
Don’t worry when you just visit
Yes, you can catch something when visiting hospitals and doctors’ offices, but you can catch something anywhere . We spoke with Megan Garibay, Resident Nurse (RN-BSN) and Clinical Educator at Comanche County Memorial Hospital , and she explained that your daily activities usually put you at an equally high risk of illness, if not greater. Such diseases like colds and flu is very contagious and can be transmitted when you touch the surface on which someone coughing or sneezing, or simply being in close proximity to an infected person. When you just visit a hospital, you are likely to run into infected people, but as Garibey points out, you are just as likely to become infected by grabbing a shopping cart that a person with the flu just used.
Thus, the real question here is not whether you can get sick in these places, but in the more you have chances to get sick in these places, because you are surrounded by a high concentration of infected people. To get down to business, no. If you can avoid the immediate vicinity of the “danger zone”, which is necessary for the transmission of viruses such as influenza, Garibey suggests that other methods of infection in the hospital are unlikely:
While there are some diseases that can be transmitted by airborne droplets, they are actually much more limited than the average person thinks. It’s not enough to just be in a hospital or doctor’s office and breathe the air there.
Basically, as long as you do not enter the marked quarantine areas and practice good hand hygiene (which we will talk about later), you immediately avoid a lot of risk. When you’re just visiting someone in the hospital, you don’t need to cover your mouth with a shirt to breathe, and you certainly don’t need a medical mask to sit in the waiting room. You probably don’t want to sit next to people who are constantly coughing and sneezing, but this should be the case wherever you go.
What to Really Worry About
When it comes to infections in healthcare settings, there is a real danger to patients . As a patient, you are usually placed even closer to other sick patients (possibly with other medical conditions), you can be treated with improperly sterilized hospital equipment, and even your own doctor can be a carrier of the infection if they do not monitor him. security protocols . This means that you are at a high risk of contracting nosocomial infections or “health-related infections” (HAI). These are infections that develop in patients when they are being treated for something else. For example, you might go to hospital with a broken bone and get the flu. Or you might visit your grandmother, who was being treated for something simple, like dehydration, and accidentally gave her pneumonia.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 1 in 25 hospital patients develop at least one HAI during their stay. In 2011 alone, about 722,000 cases of HAI were reported in US hospitals, and about 75,000 of these patients died during hospitalization. If this doesn’t sound serious enough, consider the fact that more than half of these HAIs have occurred outside of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Therefore, even if you are admitted to something not too serious, it is extremely important for your visitors to observe the rules of hygiene (more on this later). The same is true if you are visiting someone else.
Of course, before you decide to never go to the hospital again or never visit a sick family member for fear of infecting them, it’s important to remember that a large proportion of these HAIs are not serious. Things like gastrointestinal diseases, urinary tract infections (UTIs), and other minor infections are part of this dataset.
However, there are some infections that are much more serious than others; like the nastiest of them all, methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). According to the CDC , MRSA is a type of bacteria that is resistant to many antibiotics and can cause serious problems in patients whose bodies are already weakened by the disease. MRSA is spread by direct contact with an infected wound or through infected hands, and about 2% of people carry it without even knowing it. Even if you don’t show any signs of infection, you can carry and spread it too. Since a time-consuming laboratory culture is the only way to know for sure that it is MRSA, it may be too late to do anything.
Fortunately, new safety protocols and procedures have led to a steady decline in the incidence of MRSA infections in healthcare settings. A half-recent study published by the CDC in the Journal of the American Medical Association of Internal Medicine found that invasive MRSA infections fell by about 54% between 2005 and 2011 alone; reducing infections by more than 30,000 and deaths by more than 9,000. Hospitals across the country are adopting effective new strategies to contain MRSA, so whether you are a patient or a visitor, there will be a bright light at the end of the tunnel.
How to reduce the likelihood of infection for everyone
Whether you’re visiting someone in the hospital or checking yourself out, there are some simple, effective prevention methods you and your loved ones can follow to prevent life-threatening infections. We spoke to Melissa Brouwer, Public Relations Officer for the CDC’s Health Promotion Division , and she has a few suggestions for hospital visitors:
We believe the risk to visitors is low. However, the risks to patients from visitors are likely to be much higher, so we recommend never visiting patients if they are sick themselves. We also recommend that anyone visiting a healthcare facility take basic steps to combat infection, such as good hand hygiene. There may be times when visitors need to take additional steps during a patient visit, such as wearing a gown and gloves while in the patient’s room. The medical staff caring for the patient can advise any additional precautions that may be required.
We’ve mentioned good hand hygiene several times already, but what exactly does that mean? Nurse Garibay provides a great example of where to start:
Most diseases occur when we touch surfaces where the virus is hanging and then touch our face, mouth, nose or eyes without first washing our hands. So, the most effective way to prevent most diseases we come into contact with is to simply wash our hands … people should always make a conscious effort to avoid touching any part of their face without first using hand sanitizer. This habit is really hard to break, but your immune system will thank you.
Hand sanitizer is an effective way to keep your hands clean, especially if it contains 70% or more alcohol. It is widely used in the medical community and can kill cold and flu viruses. If you’re visiting someone in the hospital, it doesn’t hurt to put some on your hands when you see the dispenser. Keep in mind, however, that this hand sanitizer will not kill everything under the sun. Norovirus , stomach flu, and Clostridium difficile , bacteria that can cause severe diarrhea and bowel problems, can still live on through disinfectant. Therefore, Garibay suggests that you stick to hand washing if you are around someone with these symptoms. Also, hand sanitizer is not very effective if your hands are visibly dirty. Sanitizing your hands at this stage is just spreading bad things, so just try to wash your hands thoroughly, Garibai said.
When visiting someone in the hospital, follow this simple procedure to keep them on their way to good health:
- If you know you are sick, do not visit them all.
- Wash or disinfect your hands before entering the room.
- Follow all isolation precautions prescribed by your doctor.
- Wash or disinfect your hands when leaving.
Doctors do these disinfection steps themselves, so it’s a good habit to follow. If you yourself get sick and are unable to visit your loved ones, consider talking to them on the phone or even using video chat to comfort them. It can be hard to stay away from anyone – that you care about their need , but your little runny nose can mean more problems for them in the long run. It is true that the hospital has a lot to worry about, but as Nurse Garibey points out, a little hand hygiene is essential for prevention; both for you as a visitor and for others as patients.