Mask wearing in the veterinary practice

PPE places a barrier between staff and exposure risk and with appropriate use, helps prevent the spread of pathogens between animals and within the practice (Stull et al, 2018). Person-to-person...

Management of tubes, lines and drains

Barrier nursing describes the care of patients with infectious diseases, however, barrier nursing should be standard in all practices for many of the patients in the hospital. Patients will need to be...

Antibiotic resistance in small animal veterinary practice: veterinary nurses as antibiotic guardians

Mechanisms for antibiotic resistance may be categorised as intrinsic resistance or acquired resistance (Umber and Bender, 2009). Some bacteria are inherently resistant to certain antibiotics due to...

Veterinary nursing uniforms: their role in infection control

While in human nursing there are guidelines on the use of PPE in the PPE Regulations 1992 (RCN, 2012) this does not cover uniforms. However it is clear that for a significant part of a shift there is...

Antibiotic resistance in veterinary practice: a veterinary nurse's perspective

The first antibiotic penicillin was discovered by Alexander Fleming in 1928 (Fleming, 1929), and more than 100 compounds have been found since, but no new class has been found since 1987 (Ling et al,...

Hygiene — a primary tool in infection control

Everyone in the practice, owner/client, veterinary surgeon, veterinary nurse, receptionist, kennel worker/patient care assistant and cleaner is responsible for hygiene of the practice. It is...

An evidence-based approach to infection control in the operating theatre

Historically surgical outcomes were poor until the early nineteenth century with the major contributing factor being SSIs (Humes and Lobo, 2009). Some of the major advancements in infection control...

Peripheral intravenous catheters: improving patient safety with the use of a care bundle

Catheter-associated infections are a significant and serious problem in human medicine (Weese, 2011). In human nursing, care bundles have been introduced to try and reduce the number of blood stream...