CA passes hospital infection control laws

As both a former ICU Nurse Tech, and now a patient with Staph/MRSA, not related to my former employment, the care I currently receive as a patient with MRSA and although I am in isolation, they may as well remove the gowns, gloves and masks because the only hospital personnel who use them are the lab techs and nursing students. The Doctors and RN's only wear gloves when doing a dressing change and unless I make it a point that a sterile dressing change kit be used to insert the Huber Needle in my Portacath, they only use gloves off the wall, and few even wash their hands before doing a dressing change. I developed a severe Central Line Dressing Infection at my local hospital about six years ago because the RN felt it was beneath her to have a former healthcare worker ask her to please use a sterile dressing change kit, which she refused to do. She just used gloves off the wall and regular sterile gauze pads laid on my tray, which was not even sterilized before doing the dressing change. Within four hours I had a temp that spiked to 106 and it's a wonder I am even alive today. And this is a common thing. As a patient, thank God I am educated a little and I demand they use Sterile Dressing Kits at any hospital I go to in the part of S. CA. I live in. The same RN, when my fever spiked and they were able to trace it to the Central Line, in spite of me telling her I am allergic to Tegaderm, was out of it when they placed a new line. Of course, she used the Tegaderm, and when my Dr. came in the next morning he was so angry. My whole chest area where the Tegaderm was, was covered in an angry red rash with blisters, requiring an immediate removal of that Central Line needle and dressing(Pre Portacath), and the gauze dressings with the only tape I am not allergic to was placed over a now third Central Line accessed in less than 4 days.

My last hospital stay, I was once again placed in isolation, but once again the doctors and nurses who use the same Stethascope on me as they do on the next patient, no gloves when doing their body check during shift change, and they wonder why Staph and MRSA still spreads??

When I was an ICU Nurse Tech, the whole staff, including doctors HAD to put the shoe protectors on, along with the paper gowns, masks and double gloves on any of our MRSA patients. Was it a pain in the ass, yes it was, but by doing what we did, protected not only the other patients, but family members and ourselves. If I had taken care of an AIDS patient, I triple gloved it and would soak my tennis shoes in bleach before bringing them into my apartment and washing them. Until every hospital employee is forced to use Universal Precautions, gown up for patients requiring them to, Staph, C Diff, MRSA, etc., will NEVER BE REDUCED IN ANY HOSPITAL. Until they quit using the same equipment for taking vital signs where patients in isolation are, IT WILL NEVER BE REDUCED IN ANY HOSPITAL.

Signed:
One who knows and is now experiencing the poorest Universal Precautions in CALIFORNIA there is.

what a total nightmare. It is so TRUE and sadly constantly occurs. As an RN I have seen it everywhere I have worked and when I have been a patient.
The stethoscope should not be carried around at all. They may be carriers of who knows what bugs.
You'd think we lived in the early 1900's....