[lettie]

Thanks Steeljack, a few simple measures can help to cut infection rates but unfortunately, things aren't so simple on this side of the pond.

The government admits (grudgingly) in their document 'Winning Ways' (this is a strategy to cut health care acquired infections) that UK hospitals do not have enough private rooms. Bed cuts in many hospitals have led to a higher turnover of people, the beds in my unit are not empty for longer than 30 minutes. A quick clean with detergent then someone else is in it. It does not take a genius to figure out that cutting beds when we now have a higher patient turnover must have some effect on infection rates.

Disposing of equipment such as blood pressure cuffs may be an option in the USA where, I'm sure that the disposal and replacement of the equipment will be factored into the price of care. Here in the UK where care is free at the point of delivery, this would in all likelyhood, be a costly exercise.

People coming to some hospitals for certain operations are swabbed prior to admission. This does not apply to every operation, could you imagine if we swabbed everyone...... hospitals would not meet their targets and ops would be cancelled due to lack of private facilities.

To be honest, MRSA is not the greatest concern to most hospitals. We are all auditing things like handwashing on a fortnightly basis but MRSA is controllable. We are much more concerned about C Difficile at the moment, much more virulent, higher fatality rate, high recurrence rate after treatment, easier to spread due to explosive diarrhoea where the spores can spread throughout the room and the spores on hands cannot be killed by hand gels. C Diff is the one to worry about now and the major cause of this is the over prescription of antibiotics.