'Clean hospitals' code for patents(U.K. to reqiure patients to supply own soap and toiletries)

This Is London ^ | January 26, 2005

[Stoat]

'Clean hospitals' code for patents
26 January 2005

All NHS patients should provide their own soap and toiletries in hospital as part of a 10-point code to be launched later this year, it has emerged.

The Patients' Association has produced the code in efforts to create cleaner hospitals and reduce the risks from hospital-acquired infections.

The code, revealed by Nursing Standard magazine, says patients should arrange for relatives to wash their nightwear while they are in hospital.

It also says that hospital visitors should go home and wash and change their clothes before coming to see a relative.

The code is being launched this spring at the Clean Hospitals Summit, to be attended by NHS chief executive Sir Nigel Crisp, Chief Nursing Officer Christine Beasley and Health Minister Lord Warner.

The Patients' Association is to set the NHS a 100-day challenge to clean up its act and reduce healthcare associated infections, such as the deadly MRSA superbug.

The campaigning group, whose president is Claire Rayner, wants patients to play their part in keeping hospitals clean.

The code also says that hospital visitors should be limited to two at a time, while patients in isolation, such as those with MRSA, should receive no visitors at all.

Ms Rayner, a former nurse, told Nursing Standard: "Clean hospitals are an important factor in the fight against hospital acquired infections.

"Some wards are disgusting with urine bottles lying around and no-one bothering to take them away.

"Floors are not cleaned underneath beds and often walls are splashed with blood. Lavatories are often foul."

[Stoat]

[Pan_Yans Wife]

At my recent stay in the hospital they told me I should provide my own antibacterial liquidsoap for handwashing and showering, it cuts back on infections. I complied.

[demkicker]

Hillary care making history again....

[Petronski]

How does that make hospitals cleaner? Bringing some ghastly half-a-bar from home? That's cleaner?



Good grief, what the hell happened to Britain?

[DoughtyOne]

Nationalized medicine...

It's not just an empty slogan, it's a health care catastrophe.

[Stoat]

Good grief, what the hell happened to Britain?

Socialism, and the across-the-board societal decay that always accompanies it.

The Sun Newspaper Online - UK's biggest selling newspaper

[Petronski]

I was being rhetorical. ;O)

[Petronski]

They're going to ban the knife, you know?

[Stoat]

At my recent stay in the hospital they told me I should provide my own antibacterial liquidsoap for handwashing and showering, it cuts back on infections. I complied.

How did this make you feel?  Did you have a concern that if they weren't able to supply basics such as soap for patients, that perhaps they might not have enough suture for sewing up a surgery, or that they might ask you to go to a cement dealer and ask them to back a mixing truck up to the hospital loading dock because they don't have enough plaster for a cast on a broken limb?

Also, when such things are left up to the patients, standards tend to disappear.  One person may regard, as an example, a ancient Chinese herb as an 'antibacterial' when science cannot support such an assertion. 

Did this give you greater or lesser confidence in the quality of care that you were receiving?

[LarkNeelie]

Being a fan of reality medical shows, I caught a few over the last few years that were located in England.

I remember being struck by the difference in sterile procedures from what we see here in the States.

Some things in particular: the wards all seemed grimy and makeshift (at a "top" children's hospital") though I initially put that down to lighting issues and the like; and in surgery, people walking in and out of the operating rooms directly around in the "sterile field" (which I always thought was SACRED) and even touching or working with the patient whose body was open!

I even saw one surgeon wearing his face mask hitched UNDER his chin instead of covering the nose and mouth (which made me wonder why he bothered and to hope he didn't cough or sneeze into the patient's open wound he was digging around in).

[Stoat]

Astonishing! May God Save our British Friends.....

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

"...should arrange for relatives to wash their nightwear while they are in hospital..."

I thought Big Government wanted young adults to feel free from the 'bondage' of family ties. Interesting development.

[NaughtiusMaximus]

In the Flagstaff Medical Center, where a dear friend had the horrible misfortune to be laid up at $1600 per day, no one on the staff would either take him to a shower or give him the werewithall to give himself a sponge bath. After four days he smelled pretty rank. The staff is perenially busy in political involvement such as destroying parking areas for bike paths, making smoking a capital offense and building a huge YMCA at taxpayers expense to provide free daycare for their kids. They have no time, evidently, for the basics of patient care. I, myself, have standing orders that I am to be transported without delay from this den of Sovietski Medicina and taken to a real hospital where they care for the basic needs of the sick. I suggest you do the same should you have the misfortune to find yourself there.

[ProudVet77]

I'd also have pairs of disposible gloves. Don't want to touch most surfaces in a hostpital. Handles on faucets, doors etc.... Auto on/off for facilities would help.

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Churches will also be needed to assist with this new system. People who don't have families will need private organizations, particularly churches, to help them out now.

[boxerblues]

My husband spent several weeks in he hospital,we brought him all his own soaps and shampoos and did his laundry everyday. Some of the things we saw made us stop and think just how do they stop infections from spreading when many of the nurses and orderly were not what I would call hygienic. Bedpans an urine bottles left all over the rooms were common and on the bottom of everyone todo list

[Arthur Wildfire! March]

Another problem with this is that family members will be exposed even more to germs in the hospitals, even those 'super bugs' immune to antibiotics. If I am every hospitalized, unless I were at death's door, I'd just as soon have family members call me as enter a hospital with me, regardless of what country I'm in. Further, quality time is reduced, running after toilet paper, soap, laundry, etc. "He died? I was off washing his clothes."

[Stoat]

In the Flagstaff Medical Center....

May I ask....is this a VA hospital or a private one?  Just curious....  I know that there is variation in care in the US, but what you relate is truly awful and is beneath any standards that I've ever heard of.

And that's really the point....although sometimes there may be horror stories from hospitals in the US as you relate, they are not the norm and they are not representative of the laws and the standards that are in place, whereas this article details the actual laws to be implemented in Great Britain.  These will be the standards and the norm, not the exception.

I'm very sorry to hear of your friend's misfortune and sincerely wish him a speedy recovery.

[Stoat]

I'd also have pairs of disposible gloves. Don't want to touch most surfaces in a hostpital. Handles on faucets, doors etc.... Auto on/off for facilities would help.

Wouldn't it be just absolutely scandalous, in this age of ubiquitous gloves in U.S. hospitals, to not have access to them in a UK hospital?

[bd476]

Better a half bar from home than someone else's half bar. If allowed, patients in some cases would do better to bring in their own linens.

From a recent experience with a relative, sheets, blankets, pillow cases, wash clothes and even dishes weren't clean enough to pass muster by anyone's standards.

There are some nasty bugs going around and hospitals must be subcontracting out the housekeeping.

Think about it. There is a nationwide nursing shortage.

What priority then do hospitals give housekeeping?