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The Hospital's Obligation to Protect Patients from Carriers of Infectious Diseases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Sheila Cram
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Extract

Nosocomial infection is a serious problem in hospitals and other inpatient health care facilities. It has been receiving increasing attention in the medical literature since the first outbreaks of penicillin-resistant staphylococcal infections were recognized in the 1950s. The medical profession has been forced to acknowledge, albeit reluctantly, that infectious diseases are not going to be eradicated by the administration of antibiotics and antimicrobials alone. Microogranisms have shown amazing resilience in their ability to protect themselves against the most sophisticated drugs in our armamentarium by the formation of resistant strains. Further, organisms which were never believed to cause disease in the pre-antibiotic era are now linked with devastating infections in seriously ill hospitalized patients. Even the organisms commonly found on the skin of a healthy person can cause disease given the right set of circumstances. A carrier, however, is a person who harbors a specific pathogenic organism, yet fails to exhibit any discernible symptom of the disease. Nonetheless, the carrier is capable of spreading the organism to others.

Type
Article
Information
Medicolegal News , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , Fall 1979 , pp. 8 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1979

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References

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