Health Care Workers Battle Super Bugs
Going to a hospital can be hazardous to your health.
Among the leading dangers is MRSA, a lethal bacteria, that can easily be spread by healthcare workers. But as CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reports, a new study reveals how those same workers are coming up with effective ways to greatly reduce the chances of infecting others.
After 26 years of moving patients around Albert Einstein Medical Center, Jasper Palmer is now "the" expert on the proper removal of a scrub gown.
In under a minute he neatly encases the robe in a surgical glove, keeping any contagious bugs at bay. Now it's his innovation that is making the rounds here.
Palmer's is one of a number of precautions - including swab tests for all incoming and outgoing patients - formulated by healthcare teams to stop the spread of MRSA, an antibiotic resistant staph infection that can be fatal, especially in people with weakened immune systems.
In 2007, the Centers for Disease Control said MRSA was killing 19,000 people a year and causing 94,000 serious infections.
MRSA claimed both of Kerri Cardellos' legs. CBS News interviewed her in 2007 about the infection she believes she picked up in a Maryland hospital in 2003.
"If they had screening of MRSA they may have caught it," Cardellos says.
One type of MRSA is associated with healthcare facilities. Brought in by sick patients, it's mainly transmitted by healthcare workers.
"We have people who are coming in contact with patient after patient, who are going from room to room, who could be potential spreaders of MRSA," says Dr. Jeff Cohn, Chief Quality Officer for Albert Einstein Medical Center.
Instead of looking outside for answers, Dr. Cohn asked his front-line staff - nurses, technicians and patient transporters - to brainstorm. The approach is called Positive Deviance, or PD.
"It works because the solutions come from within," says Dr. Cohn. "The people whose behaviors need to change are the ones who come up with the ideas for what they need to do differently."
Since implementing the policy in 2006, Einstein Medical Center has cut its MRSA infections by 30 percent: 19 fewer infections in 2007. At five other healthcare facilities also using PD, infection rates dropped by up to 60 percent.
"We learn from each other," says Jennifer Marvelous, a nurse. "Personally, I respond better to that than hearing from an authority."
Just a reminder, Miller reports, that problem solving sometimes works best from the bottom up.
