Discuss Your Role as a Nurse in Preventing Hospital-Acquired Infection while on Clinical Placement

The aim of this essay is to ascertain what hospital acquired infection entails, the detrimental effects it causes and to highlight the active role nurses can take in the prevention of this type of infection.
Hospital acquired (or nosocomial) infection is: 'one that originated in the hospital environment; i.e. was not present or incubating on admission and which appeared 48h or more after admission' (Azzam et al. 2001). Infection is caused by pathogenic organisms which invade the hosts immunological defence mechanism.…