Antiseptic Diffusion

This experiment illustrates the importance of handwashing and proves that hand washing is worth it. Since our hands are constantly coming into contact with ourselves and others, touching surfaces, grabbing objects, being sneezed into, etc., keeping our hands clean is one of the most effective, yet simple way we can take to avoid getting sick and spreading germs to others. Many diseases and conditions are spread by not washing hands with soap and clean, running warm water. “The human skin is a host to anywhere between 10,000-10,000,000 bacteria per square centimeter and since health care providers come into contact with pathogenic bacteria by being engaged in patient care, hand washing can reduce the risk of spreading diseases (page 3).” The objective of the experiment is to test the effectiveness of hand washing and demonstrate normal flora. This report presents the procedures and materials for the experiment, the experiment's results, and an analysis of those results.

There is a serious concern today about healthcare associated infection due to limited or lack hand hygiene. The concern has brought burden to patients, which many times result into additional complication posing a threat to the patient’s wellness process. In some cases, these acquired infection(s) will lead to long hospitalization or rehabilitation stay or re-hospitalization with huge healthcare cost left for patients to pay. One main cause of these infections are as a result of healthcare worker not performing proper hand hygiene before and after care and also in between patients. The healthcare associated infection spread is by direct contact from one healthcare worker’s hands to the patients and from patients to patients. Hand hygiene can be defined as is a “preventive practice to stop the spread of disease. These practices include basic handwashing, using antisepsis to kill germs on hands, and protecting the skin” (Hand hygiene, 2016). To meet to standards of hand hygiene the agents used during this process are: plain soap and water, antimicrobial soap and water and alcohol-base hand sanitizer. With the use of these agents to prevent the spread of infection, proper handwashing technique is considered the optimum practice for clean hands. I chose “Hand

In order to control the growth and spread of harmful microbes that can cause disease, we use antimicrobial agent. Disinfectants are antimicrobial agents that are use in a physical process or used in a form of a chemical agent. Disinfectants are used to destroy vegetative pathogen but are not effective against bacterial endospores. Disinfectants remove harmful products of toxins from material and usually are used on inanimate objects since they can be harmful to human tissues. Another antimicrobial agent used is, antibiotics. Antibiotics are usually prescribed to a person to cure a bacterial or viral infection. Antibiotics are used to inhibit the growth of infectious agents in the human body. The disk diffusion test known as the Kirby-Bauer

-Hand-washing is important because it not only uses antimicrobial methods to “effectively reduce bacterial counts on the hands,” but it can also have “residual antimicrobial effects that last for hours” (Griffin, 2016, pp.76)

The lab result was phenomenal. We were able to distinguish which substance was more resistant to the bacteria. Comparing the results to the control disk, P-10 didn’t do as much compared to C-30 which is the most effective substance due to a higher zone of inhibition percentage. The substance disk that proved to be the most effective was C-30 which was then followed by TE-30, S-10, and lastly P-10 (see graph below). However the only two substance disks that were higher than the 10% difference were C-30 and TE-30 and both P-10 and S-10 had less than 10% difference showing errors in

This efficacy can be analyzed via various antimicrobial tests such as E-tests, disc diffusion, agar dilution, and microdilution. E-tests assess antimicrobial properties by applying a concentration gradient using strips on an agar plate inoculated with the microorganism of interest. The inhibition zones can then be assessed surrounding each strip of known antimicrobial concentrations. Disc diffusion uses this same procedure; however, the antimicrobial is applied to small discs rather than a strip. Agar dilution quantifies an effective antimicrobial concentration by using multiple agar pour plates containing increasing concentrations of the inhibitory compound. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) can then be determined by identifying the agar plate with the lowest concentration that did not support growth. Microdilution – the antimicrobial test conducted in this experiment – determines the MIC by filling the wells of a microtiter plate with decreasing concentrations of the antimicrobial. Micrograms are then added to the wells at a standardized concentration and the plate is incubated for 24-49 hours and the optimal temperature. Growth in these wells is then determined by measuring the turbidity (OD600) of the broths. Thus, the MIC identified as the well with the lowest concentration of the antimicrobial that inhibits

In this experiment each individual used the same hand washing method to measure the effectiveness of clean hands with antiseptic vs. dirty hands with no antiseptic. Afterward, observing the reduction of the number and types of bacteria on his or her hands. The antiseptic used in this experiment was one pump of Germ X with no paper towels after applying. After an incubation period of one night the plates were looked at and test results/pictures were obtained. Growth was indicated by a + for growth, a ++ for tremendous growth and a – for no growth at all.

Good disinfectants are responsible for working against all kinds of infectious agents without ruining tissues. (Page 349)

Antisepsis techniques have been around since the mid 1800s, pioneered by Ignaz Philip Semmelweis. Semmelweis determined puerperal infection was being transmitted by the hands of students to women giving birth. Semmelweis implemented a procedure that stated: any attending individual had to wash their hands in a mixture of chlorinated lime prior to caring for a patient. This action alone resulted in mortality rates dropping an estimated 94% within a year (Zoltán, 2007). In hospitals today, hand hygiene remains a staple in everyday practice, through the primary use of alcohol based hand sanitizers. However, it is estimated that at any point in time there are over 1.4 million cases of healthcare associated infections (HAI) (Ontario, 2016). Annually, in Canada alone, it is projected that eight thousand deaths occur in hospitals and associated health care facilities due to infections resulting from lack of proper hand hygiene (Ontario, 2016). Alcohol based hand sanitizer are a readily available and a time

Besides, I also realized that correctly perform hand hygiene is really important. I checked my hands under the UV light after performing hand hygiene in the lab, I found that my hands were clean but wrists were dirty. This made me think about the time when I cooked with my "clean hands". It is probably that many microorganisms transfer from my wrist to the food through contact. Micro-organisms are invisible to the naked eyes when

This essay will be discussing how effective the hand washing technique has been in reducing infections in hospital. The hand washing technique has been around since the mid-1800s, helping to reduce both hospital and community acquired infections, such as MRSA and C-diff, which both can be passed on by touch. It will establish how effecting the hand washing technique is and how can it be more effective.

Control, which is a blank template and has no medicine on it, but acted example of no effectiveness, penicillin, streptomycin, and tetracycline. The zone of inhabitation is a circular shape around the circle pad of antibiotic that represents the effectiveness of an antibiotic at a given dosage. It is measured in millimeters and included the diameter of the disk of antibiotic. We determine the effectiveness of it by putting the different measurements in three different categories. The categories are resistant, intermediate, and susceptible. Resistant means that the antibiotic was not effective, intermediate means it was slightly effective, and susceptible

Epidemiological studies are utilized to identify risk factors of diseases in populations. Knowledge of these risk factors is used to conduct further investigation and to implement intervention preventions. Since there is a global rise in human infectious disease outbreaks, it is important to understand the methods of epidemiology, in order to understand the dynamics of diseases. In the synthetic epidemic study, suny cortland microbiology students performed an experiment to develop an intervention to prevent the spread of disease. The hypothesis mentioned, if 9 subjects (50%) use two squirts of hand sanitizer and rub it in until dry there will be a 20% decrease in the spread of synthetic disease glo-germ. Materials such as, noninfectious corn starch and one infectious corn starch was distributed among classmates to further investigate how diseases are spread and its prevalence in a certain population. Students shook treated hands with random classmates, which later concluded that from one single infection, 55% percent of the class became infected. It was expected that Purell alcohol-based hand sanitizer would decrease the spread of the disease, however our hypothesis was not supported since there was an increase among the infected population of 66%. Also, it was concluded that, since microorganism are invisible to the naked eye, modes of transmission can occur indirectly, without awareness.

The experiment was conducted because of the growing popularity of hand sanitizer in the modern world along with the growing amount of resistant bacteria strains. The experiment tested how effective hand sanitizer was against Staphylococcus epidermidis. The hypothesis is that the hand sanitizer will be able to eliminate S. epidermidis effectively. The use of alcohol to sanitize needles and other surgical items is the reason behind the hypothesis.

Individual health is quite important and washing hands is one of the first steps towards controlling the spread of infections. According to Pessoa-Silva et al. (2007), hand washing remains one of the most effective strategies towards the prevention of infections. It is a fact that in most hospital care, healthcare associated infections are the ones causing most complications. However, recent studies indicate that proper