Fit and Well Idaho: The importance of Infection Prevention

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — A growing field at many hospitals and health care related fields is the infection prevention department. The week’s Fit and Well Idaho report tells us about it.

The infection prevention department at St. Luke’s is one that many people don’t know about, but it is a very important one.

The main goal is to prevent infections from happening in the hospital.

Many of the things that happen in a hospital, such as surgery, getting a catheter, or a central line, put the patients at more of a risk for getting infections.

Through training and education, and consistent monitoring, they work to make sure people don’t leave the hospital more sick than they came in.

“We are one of the departments that we work with pretty much everybody in the hospital, if there is new equipment we have to look at it to make sure we can have the ability in our health care facility to clean it, maintain it, we go everywhere and look at pretty much everything, anything that is going to happen,” said Sheri Tolley, an infection preventionist at the St. Luke’s Health System.

Infection prevention starts with all of us, by staying healthy and getting your vaccines and going to your family doctor regularly.

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