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Care Opinion

Hand washing at my GP practice

Posted By violetnh79

"Hand washing at my GP practice"

About: General practices in Forth Valley

(as a service user),

I went to see my GP recently and Dr was kind and attentive in the main about the issue I went with. 

Being listened to

Being listened to

I needed to have a blood sample taken and the Dr went from typing on the keyboard picked up blood bottles and needle thing.  They then put the tourniquet on my arm and patted around looking for a vein.  They then proceeded to put the needle in and take the blood sample.

I was quite shocked.  All the time I was thinking "are they going to wash their hands before they do this?"  I was sure they would at some point, but it didn't happen.  I didn't feel able to speak out and challenge and wasn't sure how to do this.  There was no cleaning of my skin either - I'm not sure what the current recommendation is, but I thought it was normal to clean skin with an alcohol wipe before puncturing? But this didn't happen either.
I wondered how many other people had been touched by this Dr that day, and I also wondered how dirty that keyboard was - it didn't look very clean! 
I went home worrying about whether I might end up with some kind of infection and I also wondered how many other people might have had the same experience form this Dr?
A few days have passed and I'm fine, but I thought it was important to share this experience.
Doctor

Doctor


Cleanliness

Cleanliness


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Responses

Response from Elaine Kettings, Chief Nurse, Falkirk Health & Social Care Partnership 6 years ago
Elaine Kettings
Chief Nurse,
Falkirk Health & Social Care Partnership

Submitted on 15/12/2017 at 09:27
Published on Care Opinion at 09:34

Thank you for sharing your experience with us. Your feedback raises very appropriate questions about hand hygiene, or indeed lack of it. There are actually 5 moments of opportunity for hand hygiene, all health professionals should follows this guidance to protect patients and themselves. I am very sad to hear that your GP did not appear to follow some crucial points of the guidance and this is really important for us to hear. If possible could you contact me through email to allow me the opportunity to feed this back to the appropriate GP and surgery please, it is important that we highlight this to allow staff to reflect on their practice and make the desired changes. Thank you again for sharing feedback with us, it gives us the opportunity to make improvements.

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Update posted by violetnh79 (a service user)

Hi Elaine

Thank you for responding and sorry I missed this! Could you let me have your email address and I will give you some more details.

Response from Elaine Kettings, Chief Nurse, Falkirk Health & Social Care Partnership 5 years ago
Elaine Kettings
Chief Nurse,
Falkirk Health & Social Care Partnership

Submitted on 04/05/2018 at 15:50
Published on Care Opinion at 16:35

Of course violetnh79, apologies that I did not share this in the original response.

Elaine.kettings@nhs.net

looking forward to hearing from you

Elaine Kettings

Head of Person Centred Care

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