Irish Medical News

Link: Irish Medical News.

   Doctors have been urged to make as much information as possible available to hospital ambulance staff prior to handing over patients for transport. Mr Philip Lane, Manager of the National Ambulance Service, said it was vital that ambulance personnel knew the full details of patients’ medical status, particularly if they had MRSA or another hospital acquired infection, prior to handover to ensure their correct care and to prevent cross infection. “We must work together and develop a multidisciplinary approach to dealing with patients through their hospital and ambulance journeys,” said Mr Lane, during his presentation at the national Clean Hospitals Summit last week. Mr Lane explained the implications of the recent national hospital hygiene audit on the national ambulance service and detailed how the service was implementing the recommendations of the audit report.

Comments

[ann Kennedy]

My sister's father-in-law aged 93 in in St. Vincents Hospital, Elm Park after surgery for bowel cancer.
He is a wonderful man, fought in Burma during the war, highly intelligent, retired to Ireland six months ago and suddenly found he had cancer.
He is sitting in a chair with a vile wound infection.
I visited him today, he was very weak and very depressed. I arrived at 1.15pm the bed was soiled and hadnt been changed all day. He was in chair. He was handed a yellow sheet and asked to record all he ate and drank - he is 93! The sheet was left. I helped him with it as I had had bowel surgery myself. The nurse came to make bed. No gloves used.
The beds are practically touching.
As you entered the ward, cardboard boxes are ceiling high in the corridor. Nurses are sitting in corridor trying to write up notes.
I saw the 10 hand notices to wash hands but saw no visible solutions to do so.
The nurse making this old mans bed picked up his newspapers from the floor and put them back on his bed.
The beds so close cross infection inevitable.
He was handed a carton of fortified drink but he would have found it difficult to put the straw in the hole, the nurse left once she handed it to him. I did that.
It is worse than calcutta! My niece, his granddaughter is a staff nurse in the private part. She is shocked at the public hospital and said it is worse than romania where she nursed for a good while. She and I are very down about the state of things. This man has gone down hill, yet two days after surgery he storm along the corridor like a jack rabbit. He has a vile infection of some sort. My twin says the bowel is a very dirty place but what i have seen so far it is bloody horrendous. I am deeply upset and saddened and indeed frightened for anyone entering that hospital which needs to be raised to the ground. It is unfit as a modern hospital in the 21st century.
Yours,
Ann Kenneyd