Madam, - I am pleased that Mary Raftery has focused on MRSA and hygiene in Irish hospitals (Opinion, December 2nd). I hope she inspires a campaign to do something about it. Ms Rafferty concentrated on the practices of the medical and nursing staff. I would like to add that attention needs to be urgently directed to cleaning methods also.
My husband died in Waterford Regional Hospital on October 24th last, having spent nine-and-a-half weeks as a patient there. During that time he acquired an MRSA "bug", which may have hastened his death, and certainly added significantly to the pain and discomfort he suffered. While the medical and nursing care he received was excellent, I was shocked to observe the truly atrocious standard of cleaning within the hospital. I will detail just some of what I saw.
On one occasion I witnessed a patient who spat his food out on the floor and overturned his glass of milk at lunchtime (approximately 1.30 p.m.). The food remained on the floor until two cleaners arrived to clean it up at tea-time (about 5.30 p.m). They missed the milk and it lay there in a puddle until the next morning.
The surfaces in the bathrooms were wiped with the same cloth as those in the bedroom areas, with no rinsing or washing in between, and the floor areas were treated similarly. I say "treated", as the sweeping and washing of floors was carried out in one operation with a damp mop, working from the bathroom out. The concept of cross-contamination was obviously not considered here.
In my experience, the floors were never completely cleaned, as I observed hair and other debris lying on the floor for two days running.
I also noticed that there was dried blood on the rim of a toilet for two days together at one time, and subsequently for three days at a stretch. A notice saying that these facilities were inspected five times daily was stuck to the wall, but this never happened while I attended the hospital, unless the cleaners worked at night, and I have reason to believe they did not.
Waterford's is not the only hospital guilty of low standards of cleaning. When I visited Limerick Regional Hospital recently, the lift was so dirty that I used a tissue on my hand to press the buttons; and I have heard stories from friends and relatives about poor hospital hygiene elsewhere. What we all shared was that we had not complained loudly at the time, and we took this cowardly course because we did not want to cause any unpleasantness, either for ourselves or the patients we cared about.
What surprises me is not that hospital-induced infections are rife, but, that, given what I have described above, they are not even more numerous. My husband and I ran a pub for a number of years, and the standard of hygiene there was far superior to what I witnessed in Waterford Regional Hospital.
The difference was that the pub was liable to inspection by Health Authority officials who had the power to close it down, and the customers could exercise their choice to go elsewhere. Neither of these conditions applies to our hospitals, unfortunately. - Yours, etc.,
TERESA GRAHAM,
Meadowbrook,
Tramore,
Co Waterford.