Measures to reduce the frequency with which hospitals infect patients will be announced next week. Compared to their Northern European counterparts, Irish hospitals have a poor record in relation to infection of patients with diseases resistant to anti-biotics.
Resistant microbes tend to be transmitted to patients on the hands of hospital staff. Washing or otherwise disinfecting hands is a key element of the control of this problem.
But old hospitals have relatively few points in wards at which hard-pressed staff can disinfect their hands.
The strategy, to be published by the National Disease Surveillance Centre, will recommend that hospitals make it easier for staff to disinfect their hands and that staff be educated in infection control. It will also recommend a more cautious approach to the prescribing of antibiotics - the source of the problem in the first place.
The Eastern Regional Health Authority complains that hospital beds in Dublin are being taken up by people from outside the region - but health boards in other parts of the country could make the same complaint, according to re searchers at Mayo General Hospital in Castlebar. Patients from north-eastern Mayo prefer the shorter trip to Sligo General Hospital while patients from south Mayo head for University College Hospital, Galway, according to the Irish Medical Journal. Had they travelled to Castlebar they would have, in almost all cases, been sent on to Merlin Park Hospital in Galway. Which goes to show that patients are blessed with a degree of common sense not always recognised by health planners.
Hospitalwatch@irish-times.ie
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