Here are a few items I've encountered in my day-to-day practice and some related articles.
Oral care
How many of you out there really know if your patients brush their teeth? For a lot of SCI patients, if the nurses don't do it, patients don't get their teeth brushed. Reuters Health ran an interesting article in the past week about the relationship between oral hygiene and pneumonia. It's not just associated with ventilators anymore, folks.
Devices and other goodies
On our unit, we have lots of people with Baclofen pumps. Baclofen pumps are wonderful things that can get a patient who's in what looks like a permanent fetal position back to the straight and narrow, so he or she can ride in their wheelchair and do lots of other normal things we take for granted.
One of our patients who came in this week has an interesting variant: he has a baclofen/morphine pump that delivers both drugs intrathecally.
Bugs!
A recent patient came in and screened positive for a UTI. The culprit: E coli, which according to Todar's Online Textbook of Bacteriology is responsible for 90% of UTIs. This same patient has a history of odd bugs, including Kocuria Kristinae.
1 comment:
Good topic on toothbrushing. I've just learned about the importance of toothbrushing to lessen the chances of PNA to hospitalized patientsas I was reviewing for my PCCN exam. And, no those mouth sponges cannot be used as alternative.
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