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The Onion has arrved for the week with its usual particular brand of humur:
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My local hospital has an approxiamte 12% infection rate but my local surgicenter a 0.4% infection rate. Most podiatric surgery in the US can be performed at surgicenters and should be.
Regards,
Eddie Davis, DPM

The only way to stop pts getting infections in hospital is to stop pts going into hospital.

Why ??????

Because hospitals are full of people who are crawling in pathogens.

Most of these pathogens are of no risk to normal healthy people but can prove fatal to those who are ill.

Denmark has a zero rate of infection for MRSA.

How is this achieved?

1: Swab all pts before admission, and refuse admission if positive.

2: Swab the only visitor allowed to visit, if positive refuse the visit.

3: ALL STAFF ARE TRAINED IN INFECTION CONTROL.

4: 70% bed occupancy , and all beds are sent for steam cleaning prior to reuse.

So the above is a fairly simple means of preventing infections.

All it requires is the will to ENFORCE IMPLEMENT this policy as it will upset many people.

Trouble is not half as much as a relative (pt or visitor or staff) contracting an infection and suffering damage.

regards David

In response to your post DAVOhorn, while I can see the merits of screeining staff and hospital visitors I can't help but say that even in Denmark they must treat some MRSA positive clients. In an emergency or acute situation there is simply no time to take swabs and send off for microscopy and culture/sensitivity testing. Even for elective and non-emergency admissions this policy is ethically highly questionable, do they also refuse admission to hepatitis patients or HIV patients on the grounds that they have life threatening infections?

The solutions are not in denying ill or injured people access to health care, but in training and scrupulous cross infection prevention.

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