Are our hospital's really dirty?

[lynni]

This is a huge pain in the backside for staff working in the health care profession and the press do nothing to calm public fears, in fact they make things worse i think....

I find it quite insulting really, that the press only tell one side of the story.... what they dont say is how most people have it in their systems anyway, living in an inner-city area and not looking after yourself (drugs, drink, smoking & poor diet) also doesnt help. So that once they come into hospital they are already poorly through self neglect.

What they also dont tell us is the working conditions that we work in, we dont have lockers and changing facilities and we dont get provided with showers - certainly not at the Royal anyway, who wants to get changed into street clothes after a 7 hour shift on a hot ward? I dont!

What about the working conditions for the domestics? if they were given their own ward and not moved round the hospital every other month, then maybe they would take pride in cleaning that ward and ensuring it looks brand spanking new everyday.... but they dont, they get poor pay, spoken to like crap and moved about whenever their superviser feels like it

What are the hospitals like in your areas? The Royal is ok, fairly clean. We have handwash and alcohol gel at every sink station. We have also been recently been provided with min-bottles of alcohol gel that we can pin to our tops and use a dab before we touch any patient

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1797

This second article is about my hospital and something thats been done to improve things
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/liv...n_page_id=1774

[Lee H]

too be honest Lynni are we worrying about being too clean?

What I mean is check out the products for todays "home" cleaning, you've got antibacterial this, anti-viral that and god knows what else in nearly every brand of cleaning spray et al. A few decades ago, most of the germs such as MRSA were virtually unheard off but is it co-incidence that since we've lived in a much "cleaner" society, more and more resistant germs and whatnot are starting to appear.

As for the cleanliness of local hospitals I cannot comment as they always look as clean as possible to the human eye but a few links here indicate otherwise ;

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/ne...on_the_up.html

Also, reported recently on the local news was the following story which I found quite horrific ;

http://www.manchesteronline.co.uk/ne..._scalpels.html

As always, the media in the UK always like to report the "doom & Gloom" as this probably sells more papers that good and happy stories so you'll probably never see a story on how all the staff excel at their jobs and the crappy conditions they have to ordeal every Friday night with the drunken brigade en route.

[malfunction]

For my 2p on this - through my wife's experience as student nurse - there are some bloody bad practices out there - for example my wife has been on placement at some places where she's been told off for always washing hands between patients and using gloves / apron while attending to people with infectious diseases (apparently it's a waste of money to use disposable gloves on MRSA patients). In her current placement she's been told not to use hoists to lift patients in and out of bed even though this is against health and safety rules and technically a breach of contract for a qualified nurse.

Lots of things I'm hearing are scaring me though - like the standard of students on the course (that can't even do basic maths - anyone want to take a drugs dose calculated by someone that thick?).... And one student that thought a "crash cart" was for someone who had fallen out of a chair! (WTF?!?)...

Don't get ill folks - not around people like that...

I do agree that the media in this country exaggerate everything though (for example I've been told that in a person with a fully functioning immune system MRSA won't do a damn thing to you and your body will get rid of it in short order)

[Russ]

Our Hospital is VERY clean. just got another 2 star rating, our only real problem is were 10 million squid in debt, and they tend to care to much about "THE PATIENT EXPERIENCE" rather than about the staff, which is good for them, but crap for us.

[0iD]

I do agree that the media in this country exaggerate everything though (for example I've been told that in a person with a fully functioning immune system MRSA won't do a damn thing to you and your body will get rid of it in short order)

My wife's been a nurse for quite a few years now & is currently a district nurse covering central Suffolk (Twilight). Now she's worked in London, Colchester & Ipswich hospitals & nurses there are regularly tested to see if they are MRSA positive. That is, they are carriers of the bug. If positive they can have treatment for it & the way they interact with patients is radically effected.

I have to say tho, a lot of the time the average nurse is still treated as a second class citizen. No wonder the Govt is having to import them. I'd sure as hell not want to work those hours in those conditions for a D grade's cash. Not to mention district nurses in our area, having to go out on their own to god knows where at night, even to areas the police wont go on their own. Doctors get drivers & sometimes police chaperones, Nurses get sod all (in this area).

[Zak33]

Our Hospital is VERY clean.

glad to hear that.

When I first met Sair, she got ill on me..we'd been together less than 2 weeks, and we went to a concert in Liverpool, and she got ill the night beofre and I had to bring her home then docs, then straight to casualty.....we were in Cas for the day, and late into the night, but as there were no beds, I took her home (3 minutes drive) and brought her in the day after at 8am...we waited until 4pm got her in a bed, and I went home and just collapsed from exhasution.

She was in for 1 week...in that time, I have never smelled such bad toilets, or seen so many over flowing waste bins, full of very insanitray products as I did at Stoke Mandeville. Sair (31 at the time) was in the old dears ward, very frail old ladies, who were recovering from ops....lots of wounds and fear of infection.

These old girls had to use toilets that my DOG would have said no too.....

truly bloody awefull.

Nurses on the edge of collapse from being knackered, and you dont want Nurses scrubbing bogs really....

I had to take Sair to a toilet in another ward, show her where it was, cos it was cleaner.

There are things I truly believe in changing in the NHS, but it will never happen.

For me the MAJOR PROBLEM has been advancement..in every other area of life, technology is GOOD>

But in Medicene it is BAD.

Why? Cos it costs. A huge brain scanner, or a mammoth menu of 12 hour operations costs millions.....literally millions.

Cos we CAN do these things now, we try to....and it costs money ....LOTS and LOTS of money

Given the NHS to run, I'd stop the investment in the technology, the HUGE outlay on the mammoth super computers, the gargantuan xray departments....

for 1 year.

I'd spend the money on STAFF....lots of staff....increased salary, increased staff amounts, more holidays, and better conditions.

The cleaning wild be constant, the hygiene second to none in the world.

Within 3 years I'd have MRSA gone...no more super bugs....we'd have appalingly strict Senior Nurses (Matrons from the 60's) terrorising the staff, watching like hawks, and we'd have clean people, clean buildings, clean beds, clean every thing.

The money spent on SAVING MRSA patiens, who fall or are put into Coma's, who need dialasis to survive, who need the most expensve non resitant drugs to fight it......would be a thing of the past.

Latex gloves would be everywhere....staff would be on hour long breaks, and would have holidays, where other fresh faced staff would be there to take over.......Senior Doctors would lookforward toa day at work, because the Senior Management team would have sufficent funds to let them have the bandages, the new clip boards, the unlimited biro supply, the silly things that SHOULD be obvious but ARENT, because someone has just spend 7 million pounds on a new data base that doesnt work and on a huge super nachine to find tumours deep inside 3 people per month.

Its a war out there....hard decisions need making. The press will garot you for it. But they are anyway.

After the 1st 12 months, you take stock and aim for a 3 year plan...and the inestment goes slowly back in.

But in that time, cos we have all stopped buying the super expensive technology, the compaines who make it either make it cheaper to attract us back OR perfect it and we get better stuff...but its gradual.

Do I want the hospitals of the 60's and 70's? Nearly. I want the PATIENTS to be as scared of the Sister and the Matron as the Nurses are.

If ya dont like it....go private. If ya cant afford it, put up and shut up. You are here to get BETTER and you WILL get better..


And food....hospital food.....for christ's sake. Why must it be like that?

If you put Deckard in a Hospital kitchen with a budget that was taken from ONE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT, you would have a diet of such high quality, such good stuff, such nourishment and such vitamin and energy balance that patients COULD NOT HELP BUT GET BETTER. OK, Intensive Care looses a space.

10 people die....

2000 people per week get better food, and get healthy SO FAST they leave a week early.

I'll go now....you got me started

[G4Z]

Well, earlier this year I worked in a hospital doing IT support for 6 months, I must say I never came across any of the wards being "filthy" but It was allways the case that the area around the PC's were manky unless it was a brand new one recently installed. Apart from that (and its to be expected really) I never noticed any of the wards being dirty tbh.

[TeePee]

My experience of Wycombe General Hospital is similar to your experience of Stoke Manderville Zak. I still remember many years ago attending a fracture clinic to have a broken finger reset. The Doctor had to borrow a biro from my father to use as a lever to rebreak my finger. These days it's my father who has been in and out of hospital, most recently after a heart attack. Aside from the poor hygine, my biggest gripe with his most recent visit was the food. Long-standing jokes about hospital food be damned. I had to bring meals in for him every day, as did relatives for other patients. Surely serving people with weak immune systems, contaminated and spoilt food, riddled with bacteria isn't going to help them recover.
Another example of Wycombe hospitals shortfall is in the attitude of the staff. In February I broke my arm, a nasty break at my elbow which gave me very limited mobility. At Wycombe hospital I had to wait in a corridor for an hour for an X-Ray (While three radiographers could be seen having coffee through the open door of their office). Eventually one very rude individual bent my arm for me in order to take some very poor, out-of-focus pictures of my arm shaking from the pain. A week later, I arrange a follow-up appointment at Amersham hospital. The polite, caring radiographer used pillows to help me suport my arm in the perfect position and had perfect pictures in half the time. A little patient sympathy goes a long way.
Again you could say this is a lack of investment in the staff. A little training could teach the radiographer at Wycombe to cope better with patients who have limited mobility, and higher wages and better job satisfaction might encorage them to work a little harder.
At present High Wycombe hospital is threatened with having their special care baby unit closed down, and there is a huge campeign to try to prevent this. Myself, I'm horrified at the conditions these babies miught be put through, surely they'd have a better chance of survival with a long ambulance ride to a good hospital?

[menthel]

The food is terrible in nearly all hospitals. I work in the NHS and avoid the wards at meal times because the smell makes me retch. Too many managers. They should practice decimation.....