Hospital-acquired infection

A hospital-acquired infection, also called a nosocomial infection or a healthcare-associated infection, is an infection that a patient acquires while in a hospital or another care setting. Such settings include nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities, outpatient clinics and diagnostic laboratories. The word nosocomial is used when there is no evidence that the infection was already present when the patient arrived, so that it was acquired or became a problem after admission. The infection can reach a susceptible patient through healthcare staff, contaminated equipment, bed linens or droplets in the air. It may originate in the outside environment, in another infected patient, or in infected staff, and sometimes the source cannot be found. In some cases the organism comes from the patient's own skin flora and turns opportunistic after surgery or another procedure that breaks the skin barrier or weakens immunity; such an infection still counts as nosocomial because it develops in the care setting.