Overview
Respiratory infections are common in our seasonal Canadian weather, especially during the cooler months. Since the 2002 outbreak of SARS in Toronto, stringent measures to prevent the spread of respiratory infections have been widely implemented in health care facilities including all the sites of Bruyère. Keeping infections to a minimum is an important part of our job.
These preventive measures require that our health care workers sometimes wear special masks and other protective wear to protect our patients and residents, themselves, and those visiting our facilities from the spread of respiratory viruses.
Everyone can play a role in helping to reduce the spread of infections by following these simple rules:
- Hand hygiene (for at least 15 seconds) is the most important means of preventing the spread of germs and infections in our daily activities, both inside and outside health care facilities.
- Family and friends should delay their visits if they are sick with a respiratory infection, gastroenteritis, or other infectious disease. This is of utmost importance in protecting our patients and residents who are vulnerable to infections and therefore more likely to become ill.
- During outbreaks, visits may be restricted on specific units, or facility wide. When visits are restricted, announcements will be made on this web site and through the Family and Community InfoLine and we ask that you please comply with these requests.
At Bruyère, we are committed to promoting hand hygiene for patient care. We provide access to alcohol-based hand products as well as soap and water throughout the facility for staff, patients and visitors to use. Using the guidelines of Public Health Ontario’s "Just Clean Your Hands" Campaign, we are developing a process where we will audit hand hygiene techniques of staff members. The results of this initiative will be incorporated into our hand hygiene program.