Allotments 4 All

Long overdue.

You must now rinse out your string mop AT LEAST once when washing a Ward floor!!

This might even spread to Supermarkets & the like?

Can't hurt Tim but most of the problems come in on the patients staff and visitors..
:-X

The hospital where I work they have the mop heads boiled each night and the cleaners collect them in the morning all sparkling clean.

Lauren  :)

Mum was in hospital about a month ago, just overnight thank god - the ward wasn't bad but I went round the lockers and the bed tray with antiseptic tea tree wipes just to be on the safe side - I got some very funny looks from the nursing staff but at almost 87 I wasn't taking any chances with my Mum ::)

Paula xx

Great stuff, Lauren. But spreading the grot around the floor - as in a M'way café  & many hospitals - without rinsing every few yards in disinfectant is a joke. Just because a floor is wet, it is not necessarily clean.

I've got a couple of tubs of antiseptic wipes that I got from a medical conference as samples, and intend to take one with me when I go to have the baby!

moonbells

My tip would be...NEVER EVER be afraid to ask any of the medical staff if they have washed their hands before they touch you.
Two years ago I was a patient in the very hospital I work in. You might think that's a bonus. NO...I watched them like hawks and I did on a couple of occasions tell doctors to please not to sit on my bed and had they washed their hands. I probably have black marks written in my notes (oh she's a trouble maker), but personally I didn't care what they thought. Hand washing should be second nature.

The one thing I have to say I have noticed is just how many patients  DO NOT wash their hands after using the bathroom. If they never do it at home, you would have thought they would have made an effort in hospital.
And oddly enough, women are worse than men.
Shocking isn't it?

Lauren  :(

My mother-in-law was put in a side ward when she was admitted with a leg injury. The staff told us that she`d requested it `to get a bit of peace`. When we went to visit we happily borrowed chairs etc from the main ward and returned them when we left. There was no evidence of any special hygiene procedure and we only found out over a week later that she had MRSA. The staff said that `the family have been informed`. No, we hadn`t!
She died.

If MRSA is brought into the hospitals by patients, staff and visitors - why don't we hear of cases outside the hospitals or in doctor's surgeries

Tricia?

PS: I recently brought the attention of an orthopaedic consultant to the fluff balls under the examination couch where I had been waiting to be examined. She thanked me for telling her.

You need to take swabs from patients to detect for MRSA.
Groin, Nose, Mouth, Underarm and open wounds or surgery sites. To test everyone would be quite a task.

Quote from: tim on September 25, 2007, 08:26:12
Long overdue.

You must now rinse out your string mop AT LEAST once when washing a Ward floor!!

This might even spread to Supermarkets & the like?

Recent figures suggest that the number of NHS patients killed by negligence and dirtiness has risen from around 5,000 a year to around 6,000.  The problem is getting worse, not better.

As for your comment about supermarkets, can you imagine the outcry and demands for prosecution for corporate manslaughter if Tesco suggested that the odd death from lack of hygiene was acceptable? Never mind thousands of deaths!

It's simply a matter of political will.  If we can police food shops and restaurants as well as we do, where every case of food poisoning or poor hygiene is regarded very seriously, investigated, and followed up, then we can do the same with public sevices.

Look at the foot and mouth scandal.  When there was a suspicion that the outbreak was caused by poor standards at a privately run vaccine facility, the BBC was girding its loins with the usual line about "profits ahead of people, heads must roll, disgraceful".  When it became clear that it was a government laboratory that had allowed utterly lax site access to builders' lorries, then it abruptly switched to emphasise "lack of funding, lessons must be learnt, nobody's fault".

Maybe we ought to pay our 'cleaners' more & give them a sense of purpose? But each of them need a Supervisor at present, & that's costly. Didn't the Nurses used to do this?  - No2 Daughter seems to recall after 20 years of it!

This modern thing about spray everything with 'disinfectant' as you go past & the job's done is not the way ahead.

Despite no agreement on the mop thing, we seem to have dug out a few home truths?

Tim yes its true the nurses well matrons were responsible for the cleaning staff however now they are self governed and you will have one or two housekeepers per ward when they are on day off you share one with two othe wards.
Mops are now disposable and thrown away at the end of the day.
MRSA is rife in the community many of our patients come in MRSA positive, we dont live in a perfect world we do our best however
About 2 years ago our hospital started a campaign to get patients to challenge staff if they had not seen them clean their hands or use alcohol gel and this has proved very successful. However visitors do not help, I never wear my uniform shopping etc etc but many relatives visit patients sit on their beds, cuddle the patient then go about their every day business without chaning
the staff are not the only ones responsible
lecture over.

The problem with nursing today (IMHO) is there is far too much unnecessary paper work. There is a form for everything you can think of to fill out each time a patient is admitted. This all takes time...Time that could be spent with the patient.
Every thing is on computer in my doctor's surgery, why can't it be the same for hospitals?
Thousands of hours wasted form filling.

Lauren  :(

watch this space Lauren its on its way not certain it will help but will keep an open mind

A very good friend of mine was recently in the cardiac ward of my local hospital. In the next bed was a chap who not only had a heart condition but also leukemia. After a couple of days, with no resolution of his heart problem the hospital sent him home "because he would be safer there" ???. A shocking inditement of the current state of our hospitals.

I totally agree with Debster.

This is going to raise some hackles, but I am speaking from solid personal experience, having been in the hospital environment all my working life (nearly fifty years).

Not ALL nurses are the kind, cuddly and dedicated people that news media and politicians blather on about. Accepted; the majority of nurses DO give the patients' well-being some consideration. BUT... entry requirements and standards of nursing training have been lowered considerably over the last 25 - 30 years or so, and are still being lowered. This is because the dedicated and professional people that used to be attracted to nursing simply can't exist on a nurse's salary. So a lower salary means lower expectations.


Another, very significant contribution is that, nurses - quite rightly - are promoted when their skills and experience show that they can take on a more responsible nursing role. (another) BUT... In the modern working environment, professional skill is not all that's required to manage other people. Management training is needed in order to effectively run a department or a team of people, and, although this would be a very basic necessity in any other profession, it simply isn't a requirement in the NHS.

In most cases they are promoted to Supervisory or Management positions and find themselves in charge of other nurses, but have no management skills whatever. This leads to a "playground hierarchy", which relies on bullying and threats, where Employment Law and the rights of other nursing staff are routinely disregarded by untrained and unskilled people who have been placed in positions of power. This obviously has the effect of discouraging people who simply want to get on with looking after patients.

If, on promotion, nurses were required to pass courses on Management Training, the professionalism, dedication and consideration of patients can be re-instilled into younger or less experienced nursing staff.

Sprinkle I am so very very sorry but as nurse working within the nhs i have to agree with exactly what you have said although there are still some very good younger caring nurses and as we speak the entry requirements for nursing are climbing the aim to make nursing a degree only qualification the problem with this is they are creating academics ie too posh to wash and in fact nurse training is in my opinion to create managers not nurses

this thread is very frightening, my SIL is still in hospital (her fourth week).  She caught a very bad stomach bug during her first week, just after major surgery, and had to be isolated - very upsetting for her small children who were not allowed to touch her.