I find it quite shocking that the government has no idea how many people are dying from hospital infections. The publication today of a report on hospital infections highlights how the NHS’s £12 billion IT system cannot even make a vital linkage between various data on infections.
This major report has had national news coverage – stating how 80% of hospital infections are not being monitored – and that the number of people dying from infections picked up in hospitals could be rising.
While the DoH has successfully reduced cases of two notorious superbugs, MRSA and C.difficile, it has ignored recommendations from two previous reports to introduce 
mandatory surveillance of all hospital acquired infections while there has been an increase of just as deadly, but also avoidable, infections such as surgical site infections and pneumonia.
Each year more than 300,000 patients in England acquire an infection while in hospital costing the NHS more than £1 billion a year. Yet it cannot manage to link and assess the crucial data it collates on its IT system.
This report is very timely just a day before the start of Infection 2009, a prestigious conference with experts who will be speaking about every single superbug in existence which I have been promoting. Our medical scientists have been asked to comment on the report and it has driven additional media interest towards our conference, including national TV coverage.
The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee report entitled Reducing Healthcare Associated Infection in Hospitals in England was critical of the failures of the NHS IT system. In 2004, it recommended that it should include hardware and 
software to support the collection of national surveillance data and allow effective monitoring of antibiotic use and tracking of antimicrobial resistance. Despite dramatic increases in resistance in certain pathogens, including e.coli, no national system has been put in place and in most hospital trusts there is no link between infection recording systems and antibiotic prescribing. The DoH said most NHS IT systems were not able to make a clear linkage between infection recording systems and antibiotic prescribing, despite the huge investment in its IT system.
It’s impossible to under-estimate the seriousness of hospital acquired infections, and new designs of “bug-free†hospitals and equipment will be one of the features at this conference.
I remember having a minor operation and being told by the surgeon that while the operation was straightforward, there might be complications afterwards. Sure enough, I contracted septicaemia and had to be readmitted for intravenous antibiotics. More horrifically, my friend’s mother contracted MRSA while in hospital and had to have both her legs amputated. How terrible is that!
Have you, or anyone you know, acquired an infection while in hospital?
Yes my great aunt recently died after being admitted for a minor procedure. But I don’t view it as an unfortunate infection. It was negligence.
Nurses don’t nurse, not all but most think it beneath them and auxillaries do it, if you’re lucky. After a difficult birth I was left lying in my own blood and in too much pain to clean properly for days. I infected but was young enough to cope. the elderly can’t.
When my child was rushed in the floor was thick black with dirt. I had two children to care for and had to keep them on the bed. My toddler couldn’t toddle, it was just too filthy.
Again when my child was in (luckily it was when I had just one) I cared for his raging temperature by arguing strongly for help. I got only a fan and a cloth and a bowl to sponge him down, which I did constantly. It was days before he saw a doctor and no-one would give me food yet I had no money. The tea lady let me have tea as long as I said it was for my son, who was too poorly to wake and drink. When a doctor finally came it took moments to look at him and diagnose tonsillitis, prescribe antibiotics, and within hours we were home.
UK hospitals can do good things. But there is a lot of bad that is completely unnecessarry.
Some of the problems stem from funding procedures; staff are on this or that contracts because there is a pot of money for that. Their contract can be terminated and surgery may have to be postponed, yet the same staff can be re-employed the next day on a different contrat, because the funding comes from a different pot.
The cleaning staff are contract staff and are not answerable to the hospital staff of the wards they are supposed to clean. So if something is not done properly a nurse cannot do anything. It takes a patient to complain through the complaints procedure which may get to the administrator which may bring up the issue with the contractors. Who don’t care. And neither does the administrator – they deal with money. Doctors deal with infections.
Phillipa needs to get real or better still bother to talk to a real nurse .
My daughters a senior sister in a London A&E dept.
They work a 12 hour shift .
They are always understaffed .
Often at 4 in the morning they have over 50 people waiting for attention ( more at weekends when many are also drunk )She has been attacked on more than one occasion including being punched in the face by a man !
They are ( inspite of all their qualifications ) poorly paid .
She has a one and a half hour journey to get back home every day .
She rarely complains.
As for you not getting fed , well the hospital is just that not a canteen for relatives .
The nurses dont get fed by it either .
I remember one Christmas Day when as ever she was on duty ( being single and with no children they give up their day so that the nurses with families can ) she was given from the bountiful admin dept a small pork pie for her Christmas dinner , yummy .
As for the bugs , just look at all the relatives who will insist on being on the ward at any time they wish , never washing hands before they enter the ward , have dozens crowding round the bed and insist on sitting on it as well .
And we wonder why the hospitals are now more than ever full of germs .
Lord save us from such people not the nurses.
‘@Disaffected – I understand that you love your daughter but I make no personal attack on her and am merely telling the truth so please ‘get real’ yourself and stop the personal attack on me. Thank you.
Your daughter is employed to work there, she doesn’t have to. I had to care for my son as no one else would, and I wouldn’t need to be fed if the complaining high and mighty bloody nurses did their bloody job instead of standing round bitching to each other about their lot in life. If they don’t like it, hey, they can leave. The patients can’t.
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‘@Disaffected:
Some perspective: I was in hospital last year (with a pennicilin allergy, if you ask).
The day shift on the ward were wonderful, like a dancing group or an elite military unit, changing every bed and sorting all medication for 30 odd people in a couple of hours in the morning.
OTOH, the night shift on the same ward was criminally negligent. There were three of them, and they remained in the nursing station for AT LEAST a minute after a call button was pressed. An elderly gent with a bad leg and diarrhea in the next bed needed assistance to get the loo. The day shift got him there before the inevitable accident. The night shift just let him shit himself in situ.
I had a tube in my arm for intraveinous drugs, and the dressing came off about an hour before change of shift, so I rang for assitance to replace it. The guy who came over half an hour later didn’t actually listen to me, because he remained on the phone for the duration of my conversation with him. Then he left the shift without coming over with a dressing, and without telling someone on the next shift.
And the fact is, your daughter, however dilligent and overworked, is judged on outcomes across the NHS. If she doesn’t like it, and you don’t like it, that’s unfortunate. Objecting to facts makes you look foolish. The NHS is killing people. That’s your daughter’s employer. Those are facts.
My daughter, who’s diabetic, contracted MRSA when admitted on an emergency basis for treatment of a bad hypo. The only invasive procedures were taking bloods and putting an IV line in. All the staff were wonderful, I can’t fault them.
I fault misuse of antibiotics at a GP level, in particular locums who may miss out on training. I was horrified when a locum wanted to give me antib’s for a cough without a spit. In the end I took the prescription without taking it to the chemist’s. Eventually the cough went away.
I think cleanliness has improved in hospitals and staff are doing their very best. The comment Frugal Dougal makes about antibiotics is certainly alarming. It’s easier to draw teeth from an elephant than get a prescription for them from my GP.
The latest swine flu figures come out tomorrow. Watch this space!
With people to deal with like you Philipa I could understand all the nurses walking out then you would have to look after your family completely on your own ( though most women could easily cope with a case of tonsillitus at home on without going to hospital )
The fact that the government has ‘no idea’ is truly shocking.
jean luc i totally agree that the government has no idea it happened to me and i do not get a lot of help
Do you think that the levels of infection will drop when more nurses have degrees?
Terrifying.