Emergency Room Nursing: Court Reaffirms The Importance Of Proper Aseptic Technique

    Quick Summary:  The patient's Clostridium infection was linked to a lapse in aseptic technique by the emergency room nurses.

   The patien's finger was amputated in an accident with farm machinery. He wrapped his hand and arm in his shirt, picked up his finger, and got a ride to the hospital emergency room. At the hospital, according to the record in the Court of Appeal of Louisiana, the ER physician cleaned and debrided the wound and called in an orthopedic surgeon to re-attach the finger.

   The court accepted the patient's testimony that before the initial cleansing and debriding in the emergency room, the ER nurses cut back the patient's shirt to the elbow and did not completely clean the hand itself or the arm.

   Instead, the court ruled, to prevent infection the patient’s shirt should have been removed and his whole hand and arm carefully washed, prepped for surgery and covered with sterile drapes, before the wound was cleansed and debrided by the ER physician.

   The re-attachment surgery seemed to have gone well, but infection set in. A physician who treated the patient with antibiotics for the infection testified the infection was related to Clostridium. The court accepted expert testimony linking the Clostridium infection to a lapse in aseptic technique by the ER nurses and physician, rather than a lapse in sterile technique during the finger re-attachment procedure.