MRSA Action UK: Government action or just more spin

Wednesday, 24, Sep 2008 12:00

MRSA Action UK welcomes the Health Secretary’s step change to increase the profile of Healthcare Infections in our hospitals. We also welcome the plans for a culture change in respect to information regarding Healthcare Infections and the information that patients, relatives and visitors are entitled to be informed of.

This culture change must however incorporate the medical staff within our hospitals, who we might remind the Government have the ultimate responsibility to ensure patients are not exposed to any avoidable Healthcare Infections whilst in the care of our NHS. This cooperation of the public must have caveats that the medical staff will adhere to all infection prevention and control especially hand hygiene, which at best languishes at around 60% compliance. There must be total compliance and the medical staff have a duty to ensure that hand hygiene between patients is assiduously adhered to at all times. MRSA Action UK categorically reaffirms to the Health Secretary, its previous statements that patients, relatives and visitors engagement in helping to control infections in our hospitals has to supplement that effort and must never be assumed that it will replace the responsibility that the medical staff have in ensuring patient safety.

There can be no shift of the ultimate responsibility for patient safety. Patients, relatives and visitors can play an important role within our hospitals to control the spread of infection. Our Charity’s own experience shows that for too long there has been this wall of silence within the NHS concerning Healthcare Infections and this wall has to be demolished if we are to win this battle of the super bugs.

Our Charity has some reservations on the issue of patients and relatives doing more to remind and to encourage Doctors and Nurses to wash their hands. This reservation stems from the fact that unconscious patients, including those who are too ill or are too afraid reinforces our previous comment that the ultimate responsibility for patient safety remains solely with the staff in our hospitals. This message should be reiterated by the Health Secretary in his comments to the staff in the NHS.

The proposed NHS constitution giving patients responsibilities as well as rights has to be seen in the context of what this Government are proposing. The Health Secretary will say that this will include personal hygiene and yet there is no mention of the hygiene requirement that the public should expect from him or the NHS that he is Secretary of State for, or for the responsibility for the hygiene of staff and the premises of our hospitals. Recent evidence has shown that NHS staff in some hospital trusts put personal vanity before patient safety in respect to wedding rings on their fingers. A bare below the elbows is just that, bare below the elbows and nothing less.

MRSA Action UK is encouraged to see that the Health Secretary is to set out details of a public campaign which is aimed at public empowerment. The Health Secretary also wants the public to have a broader understanding of infections and our Charity has consistently campaigned for a far more reaching campaign such as that which the Department of Health funded in the 1980’s with the AIDS campaign which informed the public of the dangers of that particular virus. Our Charity believes that now is the time to take that extra step and for this Government to show the radical thinking combined with the political courage to ensure every person in this country fully understands the fight we have with these bacteria in our hospitals. This campaign should go that extra step by becoming a national campaign on TV, Radio and in the National newspapers.

Our Charity is extremely pleased to see that the Department of Health is to work with Mr Ashley Brooks who has himself suffered and nearly died from MRSA some years ago. Mr Brooks is a prominent member of our Charity and we welcome this association with Mrs Brooks and his MAX campaign and the dedication he has shown with his Hand Hygiene campaign. We also welcome the involvement of organisations such as the Patients Association in respect to developing top tips for patients and visitors. MRSA Action UK would go one-step further and include the Doctors and Nurses in this campaign to reinforce the message that Healthcare Infections is everyone business

Our Charity has however consistently reinforced the message that there is too much disparity and inequality within the NHS, especially in respect to Healthcare Infections. The evidence has shown that it is now a postcode lottery with respect to Healthcare Infections, and our contention is that if the Health Secretary is sincere with his claim to want to engage and empower the patient on Healthcare Infections, then we have a suggestion he may wish to follow. We propose that to sincerely engage and empower patients, hospitals must be made to display their infection rates at hospital entrances in the same manner top industrial companies do with their statistics about their businesses.

This displaying of infection rates in hospitals would concentrate the minds of the staff, because as Florence Nightingale once said “For those who nurse, our nursing is a thing which, unless we are making progress every year, every month, every week, take my word for it, we are going back.”

The target to reduce MRSA by half the 2004 level was we believe long overdue, and at the time thought to be unachievable by many NHS Trusts. MRSA Action UK has always believed it was achievable and that this could be greatly improved upon. Many NHS Trusts have worked hard and made great strides, and saved lives by preventing avoidable healthcare infections.

We wish the Government to invest and to build on the success and great achievements of those NHS Trusts and to continue this focus by pledging to