They may be slow, but they're clean. Canberra Hospitals

How slack is this, a patient in The Canberra hospital, has a serious infected foot, the drainage tube that was used for the patient dropped on the floor, while the nurse along with another nurse were going to reattach it to the infected area of the foot, just as well a family member was there, and said, shouldn’t you get a clean one, that’s when they decided to use a clean one.

Leinna said :

Staph aureus lives on your skin and up your nose. Everyone has it on them. It only causes problems when it gets through your skin (e.g. IV insertion, wound infection etc etc etc). There is a specific subtype which lives in hospitals called methicillin resistant staph aureus, which is a bit tougher to get rid of as it resists the common antibiotics.

Everyone has it. Even you!

Everyone might have regular staph on their skin at some time or other but MRSA is a different story. There used to be eight antibiotics that could kill it a year ago and now there are about three (but they are so hard on kidneys that older patients can’t handle them and often die from the infection or suffer kidney failure).

It’s very annoying that some people continue to run the line that MRSA is safe on the skin as if it’s a normal “variant” when in fact it is highly dangerous. And NO I don’t have it on my skin because I tested for it as soon as I thought I might have been exposed.

Some people know MRSA as the “skin eating bacteria” that gets reported in news stories occasionally.

Staph aureus lives on your skin and up your nose. Everyone has it on them. It only causes problems when it gets through your skin (e.g. IV insertion, wound infection etc etc etc). There is a specific subtype which lives in hospitals called methicillin resistant staph aureus, which is a bit tougher to get rid of as it resists the common antibiotics.

Everyone has it. Even you!

The “superbugs” can be washed off skin and surfaces. But if you visit Canberra hospitals over nine months like I have you’ll notice that they have trouble just getting patients diagnosed and treated let alone keeping up basic cleaning and hygiene.

This May Or May Not Work Chief Minister Gallagher-Try Having All Health Care Workers Sterilizer Their Hands On Entry/Exit Of All Room’s,As Well As Each Visit To A Patient. Or Do You Prefer To Spend Time And Money On Projects Like Solar Bees And Royal Visits.Snap Out Of It Lady!!!

These bugs are all over the place, not just in hospitals. By definition “superbug”, they are nearly impossible to kill, so no matter how clean the hospital is it won’t eliminate the risk of infection. If washing the walls and hands was the solution, you’d think they’d be doing it regularly. Either that, or we’d have people hooked up to IV drips containing Pine-o-clean.

It’s a hospital. It is supposed to be clean..

Clean is a relative term, when you’ve got hundreds of sick people with a range of diseases/injuries etc its very difficult to keep a hospital sterile. I was once told by a nurse it was better to recover at home, as there are less germs around the place.

What a load of crap!

The only reason we found out that mum got infected with MRSA at Canberra Hospital is because they introduced it into her body with a catheter and it accidentally showed up on an unrelated test result. The nurses there told me that most likely every health worker had it on their skin and that’s how it’s being transmitted. Most health care workers in the ACT, unlike some other states, don’t have to have swab tests to find out if they are carriers.

The obvious reason for the “good” stats is that unless you do a specific swab test after you leave hospital, or they find out because you’re being tested for some other infection or your wound/skin gets infected in hospital, you WILL NOT know you’ve been exposed to it and it’s living on your skin until you get an infection days, months or maybe years later that can’t be cured by most antibiotics.

Obviously for my mum to have contracted it means that some staff member didn’t wash their hands or put on gloves to do a procedure. Of course I’ve gotten a response that the hospital is full of bugs and it’s just a danger of being in a hospital that you’ll get an infection.

In mum’s case there was resistance to do anything about her skin “colonisation” and they only treated the internal infection while in hospital. But after searching the internet and talking to a GP we did a total skin treatment at home to get rid of it. MRSA is so very dangerous for the elderly in particular and the hospital nursing staff don’t even know you can get rid of it with a five day cleaning and nasal cream antibiotic regime. In American and some English hospitals they do this for “colonised” patients but not here.

If you walk around the hospitals in Canberra you’ll notice that the walls haven’t been washed in years. They are dirty and the cleaning that takes place is pretty minimal and pathetic. I have watched many times in the past nine months as cleaners wiped down all surfaces in a room or bathroom with one single cloth and “mopped” the floor where people walk but not the corners.

Those bottles of pink liquid that are everywhere in hospitals should have a sign that says: “If you don’t want to infect your entire family and friends with a touch, clean your hands before you leave here”.

well I wish they got their act together 6 years ago – my grandfather would have appreciated it. Took him 2 weeks to die there from it.

In this case “they’re clean” also means “they’re less likely to kill you”.