A dirty business

The Health Information and Quality Authority’s report on its unannounced visit to Waterford Regional Hospital makes for challenging reading.

Immediate and serious risks to patients were identified at the 549-bed hospital. Hospital management have been give six weeks to address the problems which are based around a lack of basic cleanliness.

Very few people go to hospital by choice. It is one of the times when we place great trust in others, depending on their care and professionalism to help us overcome whichever condition has made hospital attention necessary. That that fraught situation is, at WRH at least, complicated by the absence of basic hygiene is unacceptable.