It can get very frustrating when the high rate of hospital-acquired infections is blamed squarely on the nurses forgetting the physicians should be held accountable too. I have seen a neurosurgeon open an external ventricular drain (EVD) without gloves and face mask. An EVD is a device used to relieve increased intracranial pressure when the proper flow of cerebrospinal fluid in the brain is obstructed. When the nurse responsible for the patient reminded the neurosurgeon, he made a snarky remark to the nurse. Situations like this can be frustrating to the nurses.
Some doctor behave like handwashing, sanitizers, or PPE use don’t apply to them. In this case, I say “Bubble up,” which means hand washing or use sanitizers and glove up-use gloves. I have seen a doctor leave the room of a patient with MRSA and proceed to the room of a different patient with a surgical incision without handwashing or sanitizer use, and the doctor did not use gloves when assessing the surgical incision on the next patient-Yike!
Nurse are the patients’ advocate, and when you see something wrong, speak up! We are in the nursing field not just to earn a paycheck but to care and look out for our patients. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are about 1.7 million hospital-acquired infections, and almost 100,000 of these infected people end up dead yearly. Please speak up when you see something wrong. Do not be afraid of retaliation. Suggest to your director of nursing on how the staff can drop anonymous notes if the doctors are not bubbling up or gloving up!