Question

1. The vast majority of the bacteria found on your skin live there without causing any harm. Why then is it important to avoid touching a urinary catheter with bare hands before it is inserted into the ureter?

2. Define resident flora and transient flora. Of the bacteria you observed today, can you tell whether they were resident or transient? How might you carry out an experiment to see which ones are resident and which ones are transient?

Answer 1

Question 1.

It has been stated that multiple type of bacteria reside over the body surface of a person. However, all these bacteria cannot be considered as harmful or harmless. It is important for a nurse to consider the vulnerability of infection while touching a urinary catheter with bare hands. The hands have a diversity of resident and transient flora which can certainly lead to urinary infection. It is important for a nurse to always wear gloves while touching a urinary catheter because it reduce the risk of cross-contamination and infections to the patients.

Question 2.

Resident flora: the resident flora are the group of micro-organisms that are always present over the body surface of a person and they usually does not cause any infection.

Transient flora: the transient flora are basically episodic in nature and they can lead to certain infectious diseases, for example: the Norovirus is a type of transient flora that can lead to stomach flu.

The resident flora can retain on the hands after washing but the transient bacteria are non-replicative and they cannot persist on the skin for a longer duration because of its acidic nature.

An unwarranted colony morphology can be used on the streak plate to distinguish resident bacteria from transient bacteria. It require the observation of the colony morphology. It include colony shape, optical properties, pigmentation, elevation, surface characteristics and margin shape. Transient bacteria such as norovirus can be distinguished from the resident bacteria by using an acidic medium to culture the bacteria. The transient bacteria will not develop colonies in such medium as they do not replicate in acidic medium.