Sanctioning doctors for hygiene breaches ‘stupid’

Sanctioning doctors for failing to wash their hands has been dismissed as a “stupid suggestion” by the head of Beaumont Hospital’s transplantation unit.

David Hickey, national director of transplantation, said hospitals were short of doctors and sanctions such as Beaumont Hospital is planning to introduce would lead to a situation where “you’ll have no one left in the health service”.

The hospital said it was planning to introduce a range of sanctions for staff who fail to comply with hand hygiene and standard precautions policies after the health watchdog found doctors in the neurosurgical intensive care unit and the emergency department were, more often than not, failing to wash their hands before or after seeing patients. Sanctions would range from withdrawing certain (unspecified) privileges to disciplinary action.

Health Information and Quality Authority inspectors said the lack of good hygiene practices were posing a risk to patients.

Hand washing is internationally recognised as the most important measure to stop the spread of healthcare associated infections.

However, Teresa Graham chair of lobby group Stop Infections Now, whose husband died a decade ago after contracting MRSA, said she believed only legal sanctions would work, and that there was a provision for this under the 1947 Health Act, in the form of a €60 fine.

Speaking on RTÉ radio yesterday, Dr Graham said people “didn’t take drink driving seriously or wearing a seat belt” until legal sanctions were introduced.

She also said she believed hygiene practices had not improved in the past decade and that the people who contacted her campaign were “living lives of quiet despair”.

Dr Graham said it was “beyond reason why the highest qualified, best educated people in the country” were not carrying out the simple act of hand washing in the interest of their patients. She estimated 800 lives are lost in hospitals each year due to healthcare associated infections.

Mr Hickey said Beaumont was planning to introduce a “bare from the elbow down” policy on foot of the damning Hiqa report and that doctors wouldn’t be able to wear suits anymore.

In relation to Hiqa criticism of the physical environment at Beaumont, Mr Hickey said it was almost impossible to clean a hospital bedroom properly because it needed to be vacant for 12 hours, but that they were running at 110% occupancy.

“Every room after a patient is discharged should be fogged with peroxide to make sure its absolutely sterile. It’s happening if there’s been a problem, but in our hospital system, we just don’t have the capacity to have empty beds.”