General Chat

SAME HOSPITAL HIT AGAIN. HAVE THEY CHECKED ALL THEIR STAFF?
MAKES YOU WONDER.

the quicker somone has the brains to bring back bleach and disinfectant the better. And what about some steam cleaning - many of us have steam cleaners at home yet I've never seen one in use in hospitals - why not? Is this nanny state going to ban them too! and stop nurses and doctors wearing their uniforms outside work - you see them in supermarkets etc. With regard to this though I have discovered that some hospitals have nowhere for nursing staff to change their uniforms so they have no choice but to wear them outside, so how much brain power is needed to find a room somewhere - an old office or even a flaming broom cupboard converted but for goodness sake do something! I'm petrified of ever having to be hospitalised and the older I get the more likely it is becoming

Are you talking about the Maidstone Hospital ??

If you are - my mum not long ago spent a week in there having been admitted and needing emergency surgery.

Have to say the nursing staff doing a sterling job and everytime a bed was vacated the whole thing was cleaned down - mattress - frame - pillows etc

Don't forget that sensationalism is a big part of journalism :O))

have to say i was in hospital recently it was so filthy that itold them if you dont send me home i will discharge myself, agency cleaning staff only ever cleaned the top of anything, never the sides or underneath shared men and women toilet was in a a shower room with dirty towels left on floor and flies round water outlet this hospital is renowned for infections.. not going back there again have asked my gp to do all the tests i missed asan outpatient

Nothing shocks me now regarding C Dif I read so many articles about people who have had this and speaking from experience it is horrid.
Without going into detail I was admited into hospital with chest problems and released on xmas eve xmas day i was admitted again I was put into isolation with a warning on the door to wash hands before going in my room and on leaving. The only people who did were my family, i dread to think what would have happened if it was not for them they had to strip my bed and wash me as the hospital staff never had the time to do so. My room was swept twice whilst I was in there
not once was it cleaned. In the end i had to go home i couldnt take anymore i weighed just 5 stone i was better cared for by my family. Never again i made my oh promise that if anything happend we would go private my time there still haunts me today.
sharon

Pat, an old friend and godmother to my son, picked this up and died of this in Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford, a fortnight ago.

n

My husband is going in for major surgery soon.......................hopefully anyway.............the've already lost him in their new computer system twice!!

The hospital he's going too hasn't got the best record for infections, he is more worried about catching something than the surgery itself..................I can't understand why they can't just do basic cleaning.

Florence Nightingale managed for goodness sake!!!

xx

xx

So true Kitty. When you think back, we didn't have so many infections when we were young. To much hygiene these days. As Ann said, what happened to good old fashioned bleach? The domestic staff are not allowed to use bleach these days. Thought it killed germs??

It does..............they probably can't use it in case they get sued when someone drinks it or puts some in their eyes!!

Health and Safety have a lot to answer for...............in my opinion anyway.

xx

When my partner was still able to work he was a cleaner at the Norfolk and Norwich Hospital. There he went through more than a month training. (This was for Serco) There he was taught HOW to wash his hands, to use different coloured mop heads for different areas, ie white for ward corridors, yellow for wards, blue for main corridors etc. New heads were used every day.

If someone passed away, there would be a ward wash, meaning everything was washed, curtains,mattress etc.

New aprons were used EVERY time they entered a side ward, even if they left that room to get something and go back in.

They were not allowed to clean up blood, vomit or other 'stuff', that was the nurses job, as was cleaning vacated beds. Having said that, all bed frames were throughly cleaned by cleaning staff daily each shift, as were curtain rails and all the other nooks and crannies.

One thing they were taught is that it is visitors who bring in the various diseases, they dont breed in the hospitals. For instance, you're working all day at your office desk, how often is your keyboard disinfected? How often is the door handle on your office done, or the bus, or the money you hand over to the driver, or put in the parking ticket machine? How clean is your car? Its all gets picked up on your clothes, hands, handbag, shoes, you then transfer it to handrails and door handles within the hospital, and even if you clean your hands with gel before entering the ward, it's still on your clothes.

So you visit aunty Mabel, who is recovering from her operation. You give her a kiss. Anything that was on your hands, has already been passed to your face when you swept your hair back, blew your nose, etc. Now aunty Mabel has got every kind of bacteria you have picked up through the day on her face....she is elderly and vulnerable. She puts her hand up to her face while she yawns, its all on her hands.

Yet hospitals still take the blame....

When my Mum was in hospital (for 3 months) the curtains were never washed, there was dried blood on the rail on the bed, the bathrooms were filthy.....then they left her alone in the loo & she fell over & never walked properly again.

The nurses were always too busy to bring a bed pan or a drink for her, yet had time to sit & yap for ages at the nurses' station.

I would have to be on my last legs to go anywhere near a hospital these days.

:0(
Joan

Theresa. I know the training your OH would go through. I had to do it for the NHS and private companies. When I was in hospital last year, I was in a room on my own for infection, but the cleaners used the same mop for the toilet and shower area as they did for the area round my bed. How do they get away with it?...... Because no supervisers check their work. Agree with your points though.

I did go the long way round to illustrate that these infections make their way INTO the hospitals, rather than actually breeding in them.

I agree with all that has been said about agency cleaners, they don't get the training that fixed staff do, NHS or others, and are often not good at English either so difficult to make them understand.

Tell me. I had one who put his fingers in my cup to clean it, as it had a dirty mark. I took it off him and demanded a clean one.

That is a serious training issue, but it is that kind of everyday automatic action that spreads infection, and we all do it in our own way.

Years ago when I worked for the Wimpy, we had in-house hygeine training. We were told to wash our hands after EVERY action, even if we just took a used chopping board into the kitchen. It was instilled in us the importance of hygeine, and now you have to have a food handlers certificate to be able to work anywhere near food.

Surely it would make proper sense to take on similarly qualified cleaning staff in hospitals? That was you would eliminate that sort of thing.

I went into my local chippy, and stood waiting for chips to be ready. The female was serving people at the front of the queue. She scooped the chips into the tray, pushed them down with her hand, then lifted a steak pie with her hand. I said to the owner that his staff should be using the tongs, and walked out. I will never be back there.

I bet her hands were not gloved either. Yes we were always told never to handle food after handling money without washing our hands first.

Hospital cleaning is obviously a specialised job, its not like other cleaning jobs, ie shop and office. It stands to reason that no cleaner should be within a mile of a hospital without a formal qualification.

I also agree with bringing back the matron. Someone needs to be on hand to oversee that standards are being kept up, and even to set the standard in the first place.

No, she didn't have gloves on. I have said for many years they should not have done away with Matrons in hospitals, if they still had them, they could save money, as they would'nt have so many neglect cases against them.

I know this may sound stupid

But

If they brought back the old fashioned "Matron" wards would be run better.
My dad went into hospital for a bypass, 5 days post op. He came out 5 months later minus his Sternum and Ribs due to catching MRSA,

We did a 140 mile round trip daily to make sure my dad was washed and fed. When I asked the nurse why dad hadn't been washed I was told "we put the water bowl in front of him". I saw no sign of barrier nursing. Dad was so out of it even now 7 years later he cannot remember being in hospital.

My darling dad cannot do hardly anything for himself now, mum does most of it and we help wherever we can.

Bring back the Matron, that used to check the surfaces and the cleaning, When I worked in the hospital we were petrified when she did the round in case we had forgotten something, if we had we soon knew it and never made that mistake again.

Sorry to go on

Jan x