Guyana Nurse Training Program: Agent Orange

My world is orange. I woke up to orange/brown water in my sink and toilet because of a broken water pump. No shower today. On to the hospital, where I talked about cleaning the equipment with the PCAs and environmental people. While they are doing everything they can, they have noticed that a lot of the "filtered" water is turning their humidifiers orange- the exact color of the sediment that appears in Randy's tidy whitey water (Randy distills his laundry water in buckets so his whites stay white- apparently orange/brown undies are NOT in fashion). This was confirmed by one of the physicians who spoke up during our CPAP lecture, who asked, "So, the humidity water shouldn't be orange, right?" They notice things aren't right, but they don't speak up. One of the nurses confirmed our suspicions of the hospital watering down the hand gel when we took a closer look at the alcohol gel bottles- the new ones are clear and smell like alcohol, the 1x refilled are slightly orange and have a faint alcohol smell, the ones refilled multiple times are orange and have no alcohol residue what so ever. As Nurse Wellington said while holding up the orange hand gel bottle, "The basics!! How are we supposed to save babies if we don't even have the basics!" I couldn't agree more. Just like the agent orange that (only supposedly, according to the US government) left people disfigured, so too does the mysterious orange water dispose our babies to infections and who knows what else.

I feel like I'm beating my head against a brick wall. I'm reinforcing principles that are so basic- thermoregulation and hand washing. I even said at one point today, "If you're not going to keep your babies warm, we might as well not even have a NICU". Harsh, I know, but true. I feel the same way about the hand gel. If the hospital is not going to take infection control seriously, we might as well not have a NICU at all. Ok, rant over....for now. Off to New Amsterdam tomorrow.