Infection Control
Ensuring that effective systems are put in place to minimise the risk of infection to patients, staff and visitors.
The Bon Secours Hospital Tralee strives to ensure that it has effective systems in place to minimise the risk of infection to patients, staff and visitors. International experience has shown that the prevention and control of HCAI requires a multi-factorial approach with multi-disciplinary team involvement. The hospital has zero tolerance approach to infection and are pro active in its prevention. We are an award winning department, winning an Irish Healthcare Centre award 2017 for working proactively to making our infection rate 0% through our infection control team and infection control link nurses.
Services Offered:
Hand hygiene facilities available throughout the hospital
High standard of environmental cleaning
Ongoing education in the prevention and control of infections for all hospital staff
Information leaflets are available for patients and visitors
About the Team:
Full time Infection Control Nurse Mary Reidy/Veronica O Dowd and is supported by a Consultant Medical Microbiologist and Infection Control Doctor, Dr Joy Baruah.
Visitors
- Please use hand hygiene facilities on entering and leaving the hospital.
- Do not visit the hospital if you have had diarrhoea or vomiting in the last three days.
- Do not visit if you feel unwell yourself or if you think you may have an infection risk to others.
- Do not sit on beds but to use chairs provided.
- Do not use the patient’s bathroom facilities, instead to use the public bathroom facilities on each floor.
- Practice good hand hygiene when visiting the hospital.
Patients
As a patient, you can prevent reduce the risk of infection by the following:
- Handwashing is the most important method of preventing the spread of infection.
- If you are ever worried that someone has forgotten to wash their hands, it's ok to remind them.
- It is important for you to wash your hands as well, especially after using the toilet and before touching your operation site. Don't forget to remind your visitors to wash their hands or use the disinfecting gel when visiting you.
- If you have, or have had an infection in the past such as MRSA/ESBL/VRE, please inform your Nurse.
- When in a shared room, ensure that you use the individual towels supplied for your personal use and keep them separate from the other patient.
- Ask friends or family who have colds, stomach bugs or other infections not to visit.
- We would like to ask your visitors not to sit on your bed or on other patient’s beds
Work
The hospital carries out hand hygiene audits twice a year, which is correlated with Bon Secours Hospital group and nationally for publication. Other data correlated with the Bon Secours Hospital group include MRSA, Clostridium difficile and Surgical Site Infections.
