HARLOW: Hospital's CDiff success
1:43pm Thursday 23rd October 2008 in Where I Live
PRINCESS Alexandra Hospital has the lowest Clostridium-Difficile rate of any general hospital in the country.
The hospital rust has reported only 20 cases of the infection since April, compared to 138 reported incidents during the same period last year.
The significant improvement in healthcare-associated infection seen over the last nine months has been as a result of a number of initiatives introduced into the hospital. These include vigorous hand hygiene audits, a management driven root cause analysis of specific cases of a hospital acquired infection that have been found plus the availability of body maps of all individual patients; illustrations found on end of a patient’s bed and provide more detail about sites where drips or other lines have been administered and on what date.
Clinical staff are then aware when they need to be removed and understand infection control implications.
Chief executive Chris Pocklington said: “This is a great achievement for us and our work to combat infection is being recognised.
“It will always be difficult to reduce numbers to the low number seen in specialist hospitals that have the lowest C-Diff rates because they do not cover the number of clinical specialities that we do.
“However we can be confident that we are ahead in relation to other district general hospitals.”
The introduction of new modern matrons and the work of a dedicated infection control team have continued to raise the awareness and educate people about combating infections.
Clostridium Difficle is a bacterium that is present naturally in the gut of about 3% of adults.
However some antibiotics can interfere with the balance of good bacteria and cause symptoms such as diarrhoea and vomiting.
To reduce the number of people who are vulnerable to the infection strict guidance has been issued across the Trust advising doctors to prescribe antibiotics cautiously.
