Hospital Bugs...a living nightmare

[Guest Battleaxe]

Did anyone see the programme tonight on ITV news? Even the keyboards signalled that they needed wiping the light went out on the keyboard when wiped with an alcohol wipe. The are adopting best practice from other countries.

[fairclaire]

I saw the programme on ITV and the reports on the news on how the NHS are 'losing the battle against MRSA'

 

Janet, I am so sorry to hear about your dad and can't imagine what you're going through. My thoughts are with you.

 

It's so typical of this! Someone goes into hospital for treatment of something that is serious enough in it's own right, in my case what turned out to be breast cancer, and end up fighting 2 battles instead of 1.

 

I am lucky in that I was a relatively healthy young(ish) woman with a decent immune system. Eldery patients and premature babies do not have the immunity to even stand a chance of fighting these bugs.

 

As for suing, the sad fact is there have been around 17 successful cases (if what I read was correct) and in most of these cases the infection was so severe that limbs were lost and other such severe symptoms.

 

my peace of mind would come from knowing that future visits to hospital (which are likely) would not result in me being absolutely paranoid abouting leaving more ill than I arrived.

 

I had some lymph nodes removed from my armpit to check if the cancer had spread. I got good results from that...i am happy about that. The site where the lymph nodes were taken is very sore, infected and not healing....the reason? my immune system is failing me because it's still fighting the infection I got in the first place

 

it just goes on..........

[Guest Battleaxe]

Fairclaire,

 

Keep positive, this will stand you in good stead. Having picked up an infection in hospital I know where you are coming from.

 

Suing really isn't an option, but you do feel like making them pay for their dirty habits , as it was said last night, the basic concepts of hygiene and asepsis are no longer taught. What passes as barrier nursing these days, is not barrier nursing in the true sense. I could go on and it would not be fair to the nurses and healthcare workers we have in CAG. I would love the job of being the advocate for cleanliness in the hospitals. i would drag my old text books from PTS and get those lessons instilled in all hospital staff. I would be tackling the cleaning contractors at the same time. I bet in six months the figures would be reduced, with every patient swabbed prior to admission for elective admissions and if it was an emergency admission they would be swabbed imeediately, it only takes three hours for the test result, up until then the patient would 'barrier nursed'. I can hear the bean counters screaming at this suggestion, but in the long run, the cost effects would be justified. Now off my soap box and into the kitchen for another cuppa

[poppynurse]

, the basic concepts of hygiene and asepsis are no longer taught. What passes as barrier nursing these days, is not barrier nursing in the true sense.

 

Sorry to disagree Battleaxe but hygiene, asepsis and infection control most definately are still taught - and we have infection control specialist nurses who are highly visible along with microbiologists visiting frequently. We have regular audits of compliance with infection control standards - frequently covert so that staff do not know they are being observed. Strict barrier nursing is difficult as our layout doesn't allow for isolation facilities with laminar flow but we do our best. Mind you our trust has pretty good infection rates. We always swab on admission if patients come from nursing homes/other hospitals/have a history of infection (but it takes a lot longer than 3 hours for results ). Our cleaners are also pretty good (we have poor cover on nights though).

 

I suppose it depends where you are - perhaps I am fortunate!

[Guest Battleaxe]

Poppynurse this is what I mean, not all Trusts swab. You can barrier nurse without laminar flow. I agree the ward layouts here do not allow for this.

 

The Infection control nurse at the local trust is fighting an uphill battle as the bean counters have taken over. it was she, who got the individual alcohol gel dispensers for me for the junior doctors.

 

I know when my foot was infected, I was horrified at how the nurses treated it. No gloves, soiled dressings dropped on the floor. I refused to let them dress the wound. I hobbled to the orthopods office and made a complaint to him. He knows me well, so he understood where I was coming from. It's such a shame that the good Trusts and their best practice is not followed by other Trusts.

 

The microbiologist at our trust comes over from another well know hospital and he does his best, but he is up against a certain mindset.

[happyolddog]

our hospitals are a bl00dy nightmare, I was in hospital late summer,in a bay with five other people. One of the patients had the runs, none of the nursing staff were interested and let him lie in it for hours. I finally ended up phoning his mother and she came in and cleaned him up. On the day I left the hospital after two nightmaresh weeks, I wrote to my MP who happens to be the health minister Patricia hewitt. I told her of my concerns. She kept in contact with me for some months and got the hospital to disciplin the staff. she also visited the ward which was the emergency medical admissions ward, after that visit all of the overbed feeding trollies were scrapped and replaced. The ward was emptied and steam cleaned. What I am getting at is if we want to see changes we have to stand up and let the right people know of our grievences.

[dubliner10]

I'm tempted to give up!!

As Poppynurse indicated hygiene and infection is taught. I teach it. It would be lovely for Battleaxe to get her old PTS books out and give everybody what for, but we have current textbooks that have up to date research based material in them. What we cannot control is peoples attitudes and nurses behaviour.

As I've said before there is no excuse for:

 

1. Not washing your hands.

2. Leaving a patient in their own urine / faeces.

3. Sitting in an office when there is clinical work to be done.

 

However, there seems to be an atmosphere building on this thread that staff in the NHS don't care. I / We don't do it for the cash.

Litigation only punishes the NHS and therefore patients. There is no single easy solution.

 

And just to confirm Battleaxe, in an emergency patient you could swab every one of them, and get the result in three hours. So take an average emergency intake of 200 patients a day - do think you could still turn that around in three hours. I can already hear the furore when waiting times go up. Do we isolate all these patients while they wait for results.

 

Sorry about the rant, but when you work your ar*e off daily, and try daily to get others to observe best practice, while coping with death and pain daily, you can probably appreciate the feeling you might get when everyone thinks that your profession are there for a laugh and don't care.

 

ahhhhh that's better.

[happyolddog]

Never give up dubliner. Always fight for whats right. My wife works in theatres, she has told me some of the scary and dangerous things that go on. the only way foward is education; not just of the staff but also of the patients. That summer fortnight when I was in hospital [and i am a regular hospital admitee] was awful five patients died who were in the same bay. the jolly trolly was in and out. Of what they died I am not sure but the conditions didn't help. I do hope you are feeling well. Good luck.

[Guest Battleaxe]

Dubliner, please don't think I am having a shot at the good nurses and NHS staff, after all I was one also and until I was retrenched in 2005, I know what a battle it was to change attitudes. My battle regarding hygiene was with the junior doctors and medical students. I used to shudder if I had to go over with the juniors to the Care of the Elderley wards. I vowed no matter how ill I get, I will never be admitted there. My classrooms were a bone of contention, they were never cleaned properly and the Clinical Skills Lab needed special cleaning for obvious reasons, but half the tinme it was never done properly, so I was always on the phone to the cleaners. We had some excellent trainers, but these people were always let down by attitude.

 

Yes I can imagine the outcry if waiting times went up, I remeber the outcry everytime the four rule was breached. it was witch hunt and this is part of the problem, the targets the other part are the bean counters.

 

I have seen patients left unattended and when I had to help a patient to the toilet, because a HCA wanted her cup of tea, I was furious. I wont go there.

 

People can only go on their own experiences and observations, but honestly you might have a shot at me about my text books from when I did PTS, but by golly those days we knew, the patients came first, we came last. I am of the older generation and I have seen advances and yes you have the modern text books, but it still gets back to the basics, hygeine and attitude.

 

Cookridge is a very old hospital, but what impressed me was the standard of hygiene and patient care whe Kent was admitted there for his treatment.

 

Please I am not having a shot, but standards can be improved in a lot of hospitals. It makes it so hard for nurses like you and Poppynurse and I do understand how you feel when you read what is being written, and honestly I have seen field hospitals in a cleaner state than our local one.

 

People ask why I gave up nursing to go teaching. That is another story.

 

It's so good to be able to talk to others on a forum like this. We may not agree at times and feel frustrated when reading the negative side of things, but this is the place to get your message across.

[JonCris]

I'm tempted to give up!!

As Poppynurse indicated hygiene and infection is taught. I teach it. It would be lovely for Battleaxe to get her old PTS books out and give everybody what for, but we have current textbooks that have up to date research based material in them. What we cannot control is peoples attitudes and nurses behaviour.

As I've said before there is no excuse for:

 

1. Not washing your hands.

2. Leaving a patient in their own urine / faeces.

3. Sitting in an office when there is clinical work to be done.

 

However, there seems to be an atmosphere building on this thread that staff in the NHS don't care. I / We don't do it for the cash.

Litigation only punishes the NHS and therefore patients. There is no single easy solution.

 

And just to confirm Battleaxe, in an emergency patient you could swab every one of them, and get the result in three hours. So take an average emergency intake of 200 patients a day - do think you could still turn that around in three hours. I can already hear the furore when waiting times go up. Do we isolate all these patients while they wait for results.

 

Sorry about the rant, but when you work your ar*e off daily, and try daily to get others to observe best practice, while coping with death and pain daily, you can probably appreciate the feeling you might get when everyone thinks that your profession are there for a laugh and don't care.

 

ahhhhh that's better.

 

As a person who has recently been a patient in hospital for over 1 month I find that whilst most of the staff tried their best there was & probably still is a small core who refuse to observe the infection regime.

 

At 1st I was too ill to observe or complian but when I began to recover I began to detect those members of staff who where not following the procedure. This included staff from all levels including cleaners using the same cleaning cloth from 1 surface to another thereby far from reducing the risk of infection actually helping cause it's. Upto doctors (including consultants) going from patient to patient without washing their hands.

 

As a result & as well as my original illness I developed rampant squits which deprived me of sleep for nights on end making my condition much much worse.

 

As I began to recover to the extent I could speak I started my recovery by refusing all those (including consultants) I felt where being somewhat cavalier with my health permission to come to my bedside unless I witnessed 1st hand their cleaning of hands.

 

Last but certainly not least there is a reluctance on the part of management to confront & punish those who are failing to follow the infection control regimes

[poppynurse]

Whilst there is no excuse for poor hygiene and infection control, management, trusts and the government have to take part of the responsibility for infection rates. I think there will always be a few staff who are not as on the ball as they should be (and part of my job as a nurse is to remind them ) but there is so much pressure on staff these days with government targets, reductions in bed numbers, increased acuity of patients leading to frequent bed moves. On our unit there is never a bed to move a patient out until they need to get a patient in.....this leads to a frantic rush around to get the patient out, sort out the bed area and get the next patient in before they breech the 4 hour target - management have even told the bed managers that they will be sacked if there are a certain number of breeches.....management don't appear to give two hoots about the patients (or staff). The pace of work these days is frequently frantic.

[happyolddog]

As I see things many of the problems surrounding infections in hospitals such as Cdif and MRSA is the lack of consideration for others. All incoming patients should be asked, NO! told to bath before admittance. Staff should be regularly checked on their hygene, without notice. Including doctors.

Another problem is the frankly irresponsable idea of contracting out cleaning contracts; "If you pay peanuts you get monkeys!" the cleaning staff at my local hospital are contracted and have to meet targets, these allow them only fifteen minutes to clean each operating theatre. I know this because my wife is an ODP/ODA in theatres, every morning her team of staff spend half an hour cleaning the theatres after the cleaning staff.

One other rant I also think that there are far too many managers and not enough staff. Far too emphisis is put on targets rather than care.

Don't give up through apathy push for a better NHS. Tell the slackers to pull their fingers out and do tell them to wash their hands.

[JonCris]

Whilst there is no excuse for poor hygiene and infection control, management, trusts and the government have to take part of the responsibility for infection rates. I think there will always be a few staff who are not as on the ball as they should be (and part of my job as a nurse is to remind them ) but there is so much pressure on staff these days with government targets, reductions in bed numbers, increased acuity of patients leading to frequent bed moves. On our unit there is never a bed to move a patient out until they need to get a patient in.....this leads to a frantic rush around to get the patient out, sort out the bed area and get the next patient in before they breech the 4 hour target - management have even told the bed managers that they will be sacked if there are a certain number of breeches.....management don't appear to give two hoots about the patients (or staff). The pace of work these days is frequently frantic.

 

My response to the underlined is that it is an empty threat either that or any trust making such threats should expect it's time to be fully occupied in the employment tribunals having their butts sued off them.

[Janet-M]

I'm tempted to give up!!

As Poppynurse indicated hygiene and infection is taught. I teach it. It would be lovely for Battleaxe to get her old PTS books out and give everybody what for, but we have current textbooks that have up to date research based material in them. What we cannot control is peoples attitudes and nurses behaviour.

As I've said before there is no excuse for:

 

1. Not washing your hands.

2. Leaving a patient in their own urine / faeces.

3. Sitting in an office when there is clinical work to be done.

 

However, there seems to be an atmosphere building on this thread that staff in the NHS don't care. I / We don't do it for the cash.

Litigation only punishes the NHS and therefore patients. There is no single easy solution.

 

And just to confirm Battleaxe, in an emergency patient you could swab every one of them, and get the result in three hours. So take an average emergency intake of 200 patients a day - do think you could still turn that around in three hours. I can already hear the furore when waiting times go up. Do we isolate all these patients while they wait for results.

 

Sorry about the rant, but when you work your ar*e off daily, and try daily to get others to observe best practice, while coping with death and pain daily, you can probably appreciate the feeling you might get when everyone thinks that your profession are there for a laugh and don't care.

 

ahhhhh that's better.

Firstly I was very upset when I wrote my first post so I apoligise if any hospital staff member thought I was talking about hospitals in general , I wasn't ,just my experience of one particular hospital

 

dubliner10 I understand why you would be upset if you are doing your best and trying to teach other staff aboout infection control but I'm sorry in the particular hospital I am talking about the practises that must be getting taught , similar to what you say you teach is simply not working and are being ignored.Why can't you do spot checks on wards ? using people that the staff do not know .

As for if it was possible for me to start litigation I fully agree that it only punishes the NHS but then they may start changing their procedures and instead of being seen to be trying to control infections they actually start putting in stratagies to make the staff do what you are teaching them.I would also want to point out that as far as I was talking I would not of kept 1p of any money I recieved from a claim .I couldn't possibly profit from my fathers death .that would make me the lowest of the low IMO.I would of done it to hopefully force them to change their procedures and get lazy staff to actually work and I would of donated the money back to the ward where he eventually died , the ward that actually did care for him as we donated the £900 he'd recieved from a medical insurance policy for the time he was neglected in the first hospital, the family wanted nothing to do with the money from a time he was neglected and caught C-dif.

As for you saying you can probably appreciate the feeling you might get when everyone thinks that your profession are there for a laugh and don't care.I hope that never came across in my post I was talking about one particular hospital but also added the comment below

 

the next hospital was completly different I really can't praise the staff enough for how hard they worked and how my dad was looked after their care was second to none

and in my second post this

 

I strongly believe their are good and bad in every job and just because you come across a few members of bad staff doesn't mean you condem them all .

To all the hospital staff who read this

The majority of you are caring,work extremley hard , long hours in sometimes difficult circumstances and I for one appreciate what you do , THANK YOU .

To the minority that are lazy ,don't use the gel etc etc just remember that could be you , your parent or your child in that bed .Treat people how you would want you or your family to be treated as it is after all someones loved one

 

 

I think I am going to unsubscibe from this thread , for the time being .As I can't read it without getting extremley upset .My dad dying from C-Dif is too recent and my emotions too raw .

 

[moxie]

I've been reading this thread with interest. I got MRSA in June 2004 when in hospital for a hernia op. I was off work for 4 months. My wound healed, I felt better and went back to work. My GP was doing regular swobs which were always positive for MRSA. I never got a negative result. Just before Xmas my wound opened slightly.Went back to GP for a swob. Confirmed it was MRSA (again - or still?). GP put me on oral antibiotics which made me feel worse. I am currently signed off work for another 2 weeks. I have to go and have some blood tests next week. My theory is that as I never had a negative swob the infection has been in my body for the past 2 years. What this means long term I have no idea. But it's not a nice thought!

[happyolddog]

Please accept my sympathys moxie, I feel very sad for you and all of the other people who have contracted this and any other "hospital" infection.

I do hope you a full recovery and may it be soon. Hearing from sombody who has been infected and knowing how it disrupts their life will make me more vigilant and I hope it does the same for others. I know most of the staff in our hospitals are careful and clean. It only takes one though for things to get out of hand. Good luck for the future and I wish you a swift recovery.

[JOSH_IOU]

I disagree the hospital bug is not a living nightmare its a reality we all have to face up to.

 

This reality can be faded away if the hospital nurse's clean up and wash there hands after them.

 

Sorry they get no sympathy from me.

[dubliner10]

Just as well they don't seek it James.

[JOSH_IOU]

Lets hope MRSA doesn't mutate into some sort of STD.

[demon_x_slash]

James, superbugs will be transmitted from patient to patient in a hospital regardless of whether staff wash their hands. We've got the high levels of infection that we have a present because there seems to be a hygiene/training problem, but it's a contributory factor, not a cause. There will always be infection in hospitals, with all sorts of viruses mixing and mutating and interacting with each other; it's the nature of hospitals, where a lot of sick people are kept in close proximity. Don't get me wrong, strict hygiene will help to reduce infection rates, but there will always be these sorts of bugs going around. They become superbugs precisely because they are in hospitals - the weaker strains will be killed off, and the ones that remain will naturally be the hardier ones, which will then interact with each other...you get the point.

Not quite sure what your point was with your last post, though

[moxie]

Please accept my sympathys moxie, I feel very sad for you and all of the other people who have contracted this and any other "hospital" infection.

I do hope you a full recovery and may it be soon. Hearing from sombody who has been infected and knowing how it disrupts their life will make me more vigilant and I hope it does the same for others. I know most of the staff in our hospitals are careful and clean. It only takes one though for things to get out of hand. Good luck for the future and I wish you a swift recovery.

 

Thanks very much, I'm feeling a lot better today.

[fairclaire]

Sort of glad I started this thread in a way....

 

Have read everyone's posts with great interest. Have ended up feeling that despite my original whingeing I have been luckier than alot of others.

 

I'm not better. But alot better than I was. Have had my radiotherapy and looks like that has gone well. I'm still very tired...my life is still not 'normal' and repeated swabs and blood tests show that the infection is still lurking around in me.

 

I've managed to go back to work albeit on reduced hours and am being able to be a sort of part-time decent mum to my son. The whole thing has been and still is an awful experience. But sitting at home all day(because you're not fit for anything else) gives you lots of time to think. I've thought about and sorted out loads of things I never had time for. That's the good thing that's come out of it.

 

I have total empathy and sympathy for those of you who have posted and suffered in the same way or whose loved ones have sufered. It's been an experience for me, not a good one, but an experience all the same.

 

May we all continue to discuss and debate...and stay healthy enough to do it!

 

Only have one tip for those unfortunate enough to be sat at home all day.......Don't!! watch Jeremy Kyle in the morning....seriously

 

lol

 

 

Claire

[Guest Battleaxe]

Jeremy Kyle should comw with a health warning. I can't believe these people are desperate to have their faces on TV and their lives aired this way. They shouold hang their heads with same. The use fould language, shout just can't speak properly.

[bridle]

One thing i would like to point out and make clear to people.

 

MRSA infection can be transmitted by anyone as most of us have MRSA in our body it is only when we are in hospital that it poses a problem and that is because your body's immune system is so low and that allows the MRSA to cause problems that is why hospitals now test patients as they come in hospital to see which patients have brought MRSA in with them. Also if a patient has MRSA they are not on the same ward they are then isolated to stop the infection spreading.

[JonCris]

One thing i would like to point out and make clear to people.

 

MRSA infection can be transmitted by anyone as most of us have MRSA in our body it is only when we are in hospital that it poses a problem and that is because your body's immune system is so low and that allows the MRSA to cause problems that is why hospitals now test patients as they come in hospital to see which patients have brought MRSA in with them. Also if a patient has MRSA they are not on the same ward they are then isolated to stop the infection spreading.

 

If only! They don't have enough isolation beds to cope. Many MRSA patients are mixed in with other ones on open wards helping it to spread