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Care Opinion

Sepsis concerns about staff washing hands.

Story from nhs.uk

"Sepsis concerns about staff washing hands."

About: Northern General Hospital

I know staff are busy and over worked but I've witnessed so many staff on every level not being sanitary.

The boxes of blue latex gloves on the walls of most wards are the worse. I've seen so many staff grab gloves from those boxes without washing their hands first. That means any contamination on their hands in now on most gloves. When the boxes are full they can easily pull one glove without touching the rest, as the box empties they have to put their hand inside the box. If they have used a keyboard or touched a door and not washed sufficiently, then everything that was on their hands is now in the box.

During Covid hand washing was increased, but now its sloppy and I suspect it is how my last 2 bouts of sepsis happened.

The keyboards used in the rooms of Critical Care were not cleaned in the week I spent there, yet medical staff used them daily with blue gloves on.

I can only speak of my own experience but if the Northern General doesn't have a wider spread problem with Sepsis I would be very surprised.

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Responses

Response from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust 3 months ago
We have made a change
Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust

Submitted on 25/01/2024 at 15:54
Published on Care Opinion at 16:53

Thank you for taking the time to share your feedback. We are really sorry to hear that you have concerns about infection prevention and control that you observed while a patient in the department.

The Critical Care department have recently been doing a lot of work around Infection Prevention and Control (IPC), including formal IPC training. Recently a ‘back to basics’ campaign was launched in the area with a education focus on ensuring all staff are wearing PPE correctly, instilling good hand hygiene and promoting environmental cleanliness.

Since being made aware of this feedback, the Matron for Critical Care has re-iterated to all staff at Mandatory training, daily handover huddles and in the education newsletter the importance of the ‘back to basic’ messages. Later this year the team are launching a ‘gloves off’ campaign, which will be focused on only wearing gloves when really necessary and reiterating messages around good hand hygiene.

If you would like to follow this up for your specific case to be investigated, please contact our PALS team on 0114 271 2400 or by emailing sth.pals@nhs.net. The PALS team will ask you to share some personal details in order for us to investigate this matter for you and help you with this.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all the best with your recovery and any ongoing care or treatment.

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