Letter: Hospital visitors can infect
Paul Dlug from Miller Place sits in his kitchen with a stack of some of his medical bills. Paul Dlug is a retired chairman of mathematics who lost a year and a half of his life due to a hospital infection following surgery for his broken hip. (Nov. 7, 2011) Credit: Randee Daddona
Bravo to Newsday for reporting on one of America's best-kept secrets, "Back from a nightmare" [News, Jan. 8]. Something as common as hospital infection isn't usually newsworthy.
Although hospital standards are often blamed, it can also be the patient's visitors who are not trained in avoiding the spread of infection.
Too often a family member is not told about hand hygiene or will enter a patient's room and put items on the bed, filthy from the outdoors. A purse that lies on the floor, or a coat the guest removes, should never be put near a patient. Even pulling a chair over can recontaminate a visitor or patient.
Ilene Corina, Wantagh
Editor's note: The writer is the president of Pulse of New York, a grassroots organization that advocates for patient safety.
