Patient Sanitization In Nursing

Proper sanitization is one of, if not the, most important aspect of working in the medical field. Nurses, doctors, technicians, or any medical personnel, come in contact with many patients in just a single day. Each patient can have a myriad of different pathogens that can easily contaminate the hospital. Hand hygiene is an easy solution that highly decreases the risk of cross-contamination to other surfaces, coworkers, and even patients. These standards of care, regarding sanitization, are relatively new in the timeline of medical practice. In the mid-1800’s, during the Crimean War, a woman by the name of Florence Nightingale was about the change the standards of health policies when treating a patient. Nightingale realized the circumstances were not the best, but at least washing hands after each patient could lead to less contamination. According to the textbook Kozier & Erb’s Fundamentals of Nursing: Concepts, Process, and Practice, due to reforming and implementing public health policies, Florence became a political nurse that was the first to exert political pressure on the government for these changes (Berman, Snyder, & Frandsen, 2016, p. 6). These basic hygiene practices are still in place today, if not more than ever. In any hospital a person steps foot in, they will notice hand …show more content…
assisting patient to blow nose, toileting or doing wound care), before and after performing invasive procedures, before putting on and after taking off gloves, after performing personal functions (e.g. using the toilet, blowing your nose), when hands come into contact with secretions, excretions, blood and body fluids (Malliarou, et al.