Connolly Hospital Fails Hygiene Audit
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Doctors bribed with parking permits to do basic hygiene training.
The Health Information and Quality Authority Hygiene audit found Connolly
Hospital to be only partially
compliant with the National Standards for the Prevention and Control of
Healthcare Associated
Infections.
Poor hygiene and hand washing practices cause
infections and deaths in our hospitals. One of our fears
going into hospital is
becoming infected with deadly Healthcare Associated Infections (HCAIs)
such as
MRSA and clostridium difficile. While the HIQA auditors found that there
was a
proactive infection prevention and control programme at Connolly
Hospital
they also had a number of very serious concerns.
It is surprising that basic hand hygiene is still an issue in
a major hospital such as Connolly. Only half of the staff have received the
mandatory infection prevention and control (IPC) training, which includes hand
hygiene practice (573 of 1017 staff had attended the mandatory standards precautions training up to end of October 2012).
Doctors in particular seem to think they are above all
this. While the audit team found a 97% attendance rate for the training, the
Hospital reported that the high attendance rate for doctors was in part as a
result of the initiative to withhold parking permits until training was
completed.
One gets the impression that many doctors did the training just to get the parking permit as their
compliance rate in hygiene practice was only 65% compared to 88% for all other
staff. On the day of the audit only half of those observed were
found to comply with best practice hand hygiene technique. This is really disappointing.
The recent
report of the Special Delivery Unit into Connolly Hospital
was particularly critical of the Emergency Department and the lack clinical
leadership there. The HIQA audit mentions a number of issues
they believed may have presented immediate serious risks to the health or
welfare of patients in ED.
On
the day of their announced visit a patient with a known
transmissible disease was being cared for in a cubicle in the ED for over 30
hours. The cubicle opened directly to a corridor where other sick and
vulnerable patients were being cared for posing a potential risk of spread of
the infection.
In another area the cleaning process in the room of a
patient with a known communicable/transmissible infection did not comply with hygiene
standards.
Connolly Hospital must now develop a quality
improvement plan (QIP) that prioritises the improvements necessary to
fully comply with the National Standards for the Prevention and Control
of Healthcare Associated Infections. This QIP must be approved by the
service provider’s identified individual who has the overall executive
accountability, responsibility and authority for the delivery of high
quality, safe and reliable services. The QIP must be published by the
Hospital on its webpage on the Health Service Executive (HSE) website within six weeks of the date of publication of this report.
HIQA Reports
HSE Response re. HIQA Inspection Report of Connolly Hospital
In line with the recommendations of HIQA, Connolly Hospital has developed and implemented an Action Plan to reduce and actively manage the risks identified following the HIQA Inspection. Any risk identified that required immediate action was addressed by Connolly Hospital straight away. Connolly Hospital is committed to providing a quality and safe service for all patients and this is a high priority for the Hospital Management Team.