Clinical Microbiology and Antimicrobial Chemotherapy. 2020; 22(4):302-305
To study the possibility of transferring multidrug resistant microorganisms through healthcare workers’ cell phones between medical institutions in Khabarovsk.
It was a comparative prospective study to assess contamination of cell phones with multidrug-resistant microorganisms in a population (n = 30) and among intensive care unit (ICU) physicians (n = 60) in medical institutions. Antimicrobial susceptibility testing was performed by disc-diffusion method. A total of 514 healthcare workers from medical institutions of Khabarovsk were interviewed. The study enrolled 58.9% (n = 303) of physicians and 41.1% (n = 211) of nurses.
Microbial contamination of the physicians’ cell phones with extensively drug-resistant (16.7%; n = 10) and pandrug-resistant strains (6.7%; n = 4) was found to be significantly higher than that in the population.
Working in several medical institutions and the healthcare workers’ personal articles can be the ways of spreading resistant microorganisms.