I am seriously sceptical about the official figures reorting the incidence of c.dif onset in hospitals. My elderly mother succumbed to this distressing infection this year. The hospital staff were in denial and then quite incompetent with barrier nursing and palliative care. The GP who issued the ‘death certificate’ at the hospital was at pains to avoid mentioning c.dif even though this was clearly what caused her to succumb. Instead the primary causes were put down to other ongoing but well managed health problems many fit 95 year olds have. Having worked in healthcare (private) for over three decades I sensed there was a serious disincentive for the GP to mention the true facts on the certificate. I have no complaint about the GP but felt he was being peresuaded to compromise his normal and expected ethical and diagnostic standards.

Last year my mother-in-law contracted MRSA in Totnes hospital and was transferred to a care home without that information being communicated to any of us. It is was the ambulance driver who told the nurses at the home that the old lady has MRSA. This was not mentioned on her certificate.

How can one trust that medicine and those in the NHS stand by or even have memory of the Hippocratic Oath? Perhaps it is no longer sexy to make such an oath or to support Doctors and nurses who are genuinely vocational.