Labels: Nursing, Radiology
Do nurses in radiology wash their hands adequately and of specified time length?
1.0 Introduction
Radiology refers to the specialty of medicine which deals with the application of imaging technology such as x-ray and radiation to diagnosing and treating disease. Interventional radiology is performed with the guidance of imaging technologies. Medical imaging is a function of the radiographer or the radiologic technologist. Radiology nurses also perform the medical procedure wherein they provide care and support to patients undergoing diagnosis in radiation imaging environments. Some of the medical procedures that radiology nurses involve in are ultrasonography, magnetic resonance and radiation oncology.
On the other hand, medical hand hygiene pertains to the hygiene practices related to the administration of medicine and medical care which aimed at preventing or minimizing disease and the spread of these diseases. Hand hygiene purports to cleanse the hands of pathogens and chemicals which can further cause personal harm or disease, and is done for a minimum of 15 seconds to 2 to 6 minutes to 10 minutes. Nursing literature had long recognized the importance of good hand hygiene as a major factor in preventing the spread of illness in the care environment. Ellwood (2002) noted that it is very unlikely that health care practitioners observe such a vital practice.
For radiology nurses, they have a great opportunity to control nosocomial infection by attending to hand washing. If radiology nurses perform poorly on this, rates of infection would be high and if they will perform well, patients will be spared of the excess morbidity, mortality, longer hospitalizations, psychologic and social distress, and increased health care costs associated with preventable infections (Delaney and Gunderman, 2008). In radiology nursing
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