MRSA at Blackburn Hospital

[K.S.H]

I see they have found MRSA on four babies in the newly opened hospital
More details HERE

[fc:stanley]

oooo dear , they need to get cleaner! Looks great the new hospital in blackburn though!

[chav1]

cant realy blame the hospitals completely on MRSA , visitors are supposed to wash tehir hands with the free handwash as they enter and as they leave a ward but when i was in earlier this year a lot of visitors didnt bother.

[shakermaker]

If it's so important that visitors wash their hands as they enter and leave surely the hospital should enforce it.
It's sad news.

[chav1]

Originally Posted by shakermaker

If it's so important that visitors wash their hands as they enter and leave surely the hospital should enforce it.
It's sad news.

they do their best but believe me those poor nurses are way to busy to have the extra job of monitoring visitors, if they see somone notwashing their hands then they shout at them to do it

when i say wash hands thats not %100 acurate what you have to do is rub your hands with a special solution provided free of charge at the entrance of every ward

thats how it worked at BRI , i havnt yet stayed in queens park since the extention was built but should be doing so rather soon so i will find out soon enough lol

hoep i dont get MRSA again ,although the private room was a bonus ime not sure it was given to me because of the MRSA or simply to keep me away from the general population lol

[shakermaker]

Originally Posted by chav1

they do their best but believe me those poor nurses are way to busy to have the extra job of monitoring visitors,

Too true.

[andrewb]

To be honest its supposed to be 3 visitors per bed at visiting times, but this rule seems to have gone out the window.

The amount of time I have seen huge groups of families/friends visiting, and by huge I sometimes mean 10-15+. The point is, vistors are simply germ carriers and fair enough if someone is dieing you do need to go and see them but when someone is just in hospital due to illness I dont think its nessesary for the whole family to go and subject a ward to so many germs.

ps. Not to mention that yes as stated above nurses have to monitor the visitors and having a huge number such as that walking in and out all the time does not help them do their job.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by chav1

cant realy blame the hospitals completely on MRSA

A lot of it is caused by sloppy/lazy/useless (pick your own description) health care professionals!! Not all of course as there are always exceptions.
We took our son to A&E the other day as he was suffering from bad stomach craps and we were worried about appendicitis. The triage nurse did not wash her hands before or after doing a glucose test on him, she did not wear gloves while doing the blood prick thing or while trying to squeeze the blood out of his finger for the test.

While I was on one of the wards a couple of months ago there were signs up telling the staff to wash hands before and after seeing each patient. This rarely happened.

The NHS keep telling us that visitors and out patients bring these bugs into the hospital. They have built a new hospital and in all the waiting areas for out patients they have put down carpet!! Why?? You can't mop carpet and you can be damn sure they wont clean it every day.

I agree that many of the problems are caused by visitors but if they saw the staff following the correct cleanliness procedures then maybe they would follow suit.

Originally Posted by Cyfr

To be honest its supposed to be 3 visitors per bed at visiting times, .... I have seen huge groups of families/friends visiting, and by huge I sometimes mean 10-15+.

That is common on the maternity wards and is usually Asian families. When we had Emily they had security stopping these large groups from entering the ward. If there are rules for visitors then they should be enforced, I witnessed them being enforced and it was nice to see.

[garinda]

I was visiting someone in hospital last year in Manchester. It was on a ward full of people with a high risk of infection. Rules about visitors numbers were enforced rigorously, as was the rule about cleaning your hands with the alcohol gel, but whilst sat in the coridor I was amazed to see the porter deliver the internal mail, going from ward to ward in outdoor clothing, and not once when entering each ward did he follow the rules himself.

Get rid of some of the pen pushers and bring back the Matrons, who ruled their wards with an iron will.

[grannyclaret]

I went to Blackpool Vic on friday with my hubby ,you are sat in the waiting rooms for ages and it was sooo hot ,no wonder its a breading ground for germs,,

[lettie]

Blackburn Hospital is very committed to reducing the number of MRSA cases and has signed up to the Saving Lives campaign which allows us to monitor and audit all of our cases and practices.

There are a few issues which (during the above monitoring) I feel that I need to set straight. The NICU is not part of the new hospital as inaccurately reported by the beeb. That part of the building is 12 years old.

During one of our audits on handwashing, I found that doctors and nursing staff still have a lot of work to do but have shown an improvement in their practices. The main people who do not wash their hands or use the gels are actually.............the patients!!!!!! Visitors will also neglect to use the gels or wash hands.

Visitors will use the gels when told to do so, but why should the nursing staff have to keep chivvying visitors along when there are notices everywhere. If there are only 2 nurses on a busy ward, believe me, they have more than enough to do without policing visitors and getting a load of abuse from them. Over the years I have come to think that visiting should be restricted to next of kin only.

MRSA will never go away but it can be reduced. I believe that Blackburn Hospital is doing its very best to achieve this at the moment. In comparison to other hospitals Blackburn's MRSA rates are not bad at all.

If anyone wants to know about how we audit and the intricate ins and outs of what the powers that be are doing then send me a pm......I'll be more than happy to give you all of the boring detail...