Dedicated patient equipment
Minimum amounts of consumables should be taken into the room. It is not necessary to discard all unused items on discharge of the patient.
Dedicate the use of non-critical items (e.g. stethoscope, sphygmomanometer etc.) to a single patient or cohort of patients with VRE where possible. If this is not possible, shared patient equipment must be cleaned and disinfected prior to use on another patient.
Patients can use communal phones; however, the patient should perform hand hygiene using alcohol-based hand rub prior to using the phone and the phone should be decontaminated using a large alcohol wipe prior to returning to general use.
Patients chart and medical records should be stored outside of the patient's room, however there may be some instances where these may be required to be taken to the bedside, for example to enable checking patient identification during medication administration, IV infusions, medical procedures and/or documentation.