ABSTRACT
In modern health care systems nosocomial infection is a major cause of patient suffering and leads to high financial costs. Overall nursing care that is part of nursing staff's daily routine is not brought under scrutiny often enough. The goal of this research project is to look at a small part only of optimal intravenous drip care. The focus of the paper is the influence that the use of two different kinds of dressings and two different types of cleansing methods have on the general appearance, as well as the microbiological results at the point of entry of the i.v. drip into the central veins. In order to examine this, test patients from different types of intensive care units were used for an experiment under highly controlled conditions. The results show that a variation in nursing care of the i.v. drip leads to a variation in germ development and in the general appearance at the point of entry.
