Superbugs Top Priority For Staff

Hospital staff are to try to seek out superbugs and treat them before they threaten the lives of patients. NHS Grampian wants to reduce infections – such as MRSA, the flesh-eating bug – in high dependency and intensive care units by 25%.

After a successful pilot scheme in Aberdeen and Elgin, hospitals are to introduce testing of patients from an early stage in these units to catch infections at their very earliest stages.

Between 30% and 50% of people in high dependency and intensive care units die after contracting these bugs because their natural defences against them are diminished.

Medical director of NHS Grampian Roelf Dijkhuizen told a meeting of the board yesterday: “Infection is very serious. At the moment, most intensive care departments wait for patients to show the infection but we want to search it out.”

Testing of blood and urine can detect infections at an early stage. Mr Dijkhuizen said it was almost impossible to stop infections going into hospitals because people carried them about all the time.

But several measures can be taken in hospitals to try to stop them from spreading or getting worse. As well as the early testing for vulnerable patients, the measures include cleanliness in hospitals, hand-washing procedures for staff, regulations for visitors including hand-washing and control of the types of antibiotics prescribed to patients.

The control of infection is one part of a three-pronged strategy to improve patient safety in north-east and Moray hospitals. The second part relates to patient identification, where every patient is given an ID number. This will help prevent mistakes in handing out the wrong medication or getting X-rays mixed up.

Mr Dijkhuizen told the NHS board meeting yesterday there are about 125 cases of mixed medication a year. There were two occasions in the last three years where there was a mix-up over X-rays.

This pales when compared with the tens of thousands of patients who are given the correct medication or X-rays, Mr Dijkhuizen said. “These are errors where people need not necessarily come to harm but these are errors,” he added.

The third area of patient safety which is being targeted by the NHS board is falls by patients in hospitals. These might not appear particularly dangerous, said Mr Dijkhuizen but, for a 92-year-old who is already in hospital for something else, having to face a hip replacement on top of that could be very serious.

He said 50% of all recorded “incidents” in hospitals are due to falls. Other types of incidents include treatment problems, missed appointments or medication mistakes. The board believes up to 40% of the falls are preventable.

A register of accidents is going to be set up, with staff trained to look into how falls can be prevented. It was agreed at the trust board meeting to look into how students at Aberdeen University and Robert Gordon University could have patient safety as part of their training, so it is drilled into them.