Aug 21 2007
The danger of MRSA/c. dif in large hospitals as small hospitals close
We learn today that research confirms the obvious - if you concentrate Accident and Emergency centres at a few big hospitals it takes much longer for casualties to get there. This means that instead of getting their crucial first treatment at a bigger and better trauma centre, they have to receive it in a travelling ambulance, which is more dangerous.
There is another reason to be worried. Almost 6000 people died in 2005 in UK NHS hospitals where a hospital acquired infection was mentioned on their death certificate. Concentrating so much at a few large hospitals may mean sending accident victims to infection centres, where virulent strands of c dif and MRSA are proving difficult to remove. This too should be considered before the government blunders into an other round of smaller local hospital closures.
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
Ref c.dif.
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.
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