CHICAGO, IL – Chicago General Hospital is beginning a new initiative to reduce infections in the hospital. Dr. Reiff Lightlier, CMO of the hospital, said ,” As we all know infections in hospital are devastating complications we desperately want to avoid. Many have tried initiatives such as gowns, gloves, hand washing and many others with limited success.”

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I rubs the Antibiotic Ointment on its skin

The initiative, which will begin next month, is simple: coat patients in anti-bacterial ointment. The patient’s nurse will receive an electronic notification any time they are found to have an infection. They will be then instructed to place the routine contact precautions in the doorway, and additionally slather the patient in several gallons of anti-bacterial ointment.

Dr. Lightlier commented that, “ We realize doctors and nurses lack the common human decency to simply wash their hands between seeing patients. It is literally impossible to convince anyone to do this. But the idea of coating the patient in ointment has really caught on.”

Jackie Thompson, 7th floor medicine nurse says, “ I think we should make it a slip’n slide type thing, you know just lay out a big slide and have the patients just run down it and get all soaked and covered in the stuff, wow what a blast that would be. Infections would plummet.”  Tamika Jones, MICU nurse had another idea “For immobile patients, how about a water gun, like a super soaker? We’d all be excited about blasting our infected patients with one of those.”

The hospital was looking into bringing in local elementary school children to host water balloon fights filled with antibiotic ointment on the Infectious Disease Unit.

At press time Dr. Ligthlier was ordering dunk tanks to be filled with anti-bacterial ointment to be placed under neath patients at high risk for infections, such as those immunosupressed by organ transplants or HIV.