Friday, 3 August 2007
MRSA - Stating The Obvious - 1
MRSA - methicillin resistant staphylococcus aureus - is a fact of health service life in the UK, as, indeed in most of the world.
The newspapers are full of it - well, half truths about it - to the point when recently, a patient stopped at the ward door and refused point-blank to come in.
I don't blame him, really. It's no mystery that NHS wards are dirty places, and little mystery that patients often enter hospital without infection, and go home with it.
So why are MRSA policies so utterly lacking in common sense?
Isolating Patients
This is the first of several factors I'll be looking at over the next few weeks.
It seems fairly obvious to me that isolating a patient in a crowded four-bed unit is pretty much a non-starter. The other three patients have to be at increased risk, surely? Do we need to wait for someone to do some research, someone to die, or someone to sue, before that obvious fact finally gets accepted?
Sure MRSA is rarely airborne, and so there is a theoretical possibility of not transmitting the infection from one patient to the other three. But in the real world, with shared curtains, visitors moving chairs, domestic staff moving plates, nursing staff moving all manner of things, not to mention cancelling callbells and filling in charts ... does anyone on the planet believe that gloves are going to get donned and removed correctly 24/7?
One group of people ... hospital managers. No one else.
And even if normal human beings believed in that particular Santa, would they believe it right to take that gamble with three other sick people? With poor or non-existant warning signs? And you can bet that whatever notices do exist will not mention MRSA (not even in tiny print).
And even if they sold their souls and accepted that risk ... could it ever be right to do it without even telling those three patients? (not that they won't guess, and lose all respect for the staff ...). ¶ 10:28
The newspapers are full of it - well, half truths about it - to the point when recently, a patient stopped at the ward door and refused point-blank to come in.
I don't blame him, really. It's no mystery that NHS wards are dirty places, and little mystery that patients often enter hospital without infection, and go home with it.
So why are MRSA policies so utterly lacking in common sense?
Isolating Patients
This is the first of several factors I'll be looking at over the next few weeks.
It seems fairly obvious to me that isolating a patient in a crowded four-bed unit is pretty much a non-starter. The other three patients have to be at increased risk, surely? Do we need to wait for someone to do some research, someone to die, or someone to sue, before that obvious fact finally gets accepted?
Sure MRSA is rarely airborne, and so there is a theoretical possibility of not transmitting the infection from one patient to the other three. But in the real world, with shared curtains, visitors moving chairs, domestic staff moving plates, nursing staff moving all manner of things, not to mention cancelling callbells and filling in charts ... does anyone on the planet believe that gloves are going to get donned and removed correctly 24/7?
One group of people ... hospital managers. No one else.
And even if normal human beings believed in that particular Santa, would they believe it right to take that gamble with three other sick people? With poor or non-existant warning signs? And you can bet that whatever notices do exist will not mention MRSA (not even in tiny print).
And even if they sold their souls and accepted that risk ... could it ever be right to do it without even telling those three patients? (not that they won't guess, and lose all respect for the staff ...). ¶ 10:28
