BMI Healthcare strives to ensure that the risk of infection for their patients is kept as low as possible and a focus on hygiene and infection control is one of our top priorities.
Understanding how and why infections exist in a clinical setting will help you to work with the medical staff to reduce your risk of being exposed to any infection. This page explains what BMI Healthcare does to combat infection and how we work towards ensuring your safety.
Data below is for all BMI hospitals.
Ensuring quality & managing infection
What does BMI Healthcare do to combat infection?
Infection Prevention and Control is taken very seriously within BMI Healthcare hospitals and every hospital has a dedicated infection control team. Because best practice constantly evolves, so too do our policies and procedures on infection control.
The Corporate Head of Infection Prevention and Control works with each hospital’s infection control team on a regular basis to ensure the implementation of evidence based principles and practice. In addition every member of staff receives update training annually. All these activities combine to monitor and maintain our excellent results.
Who does what in the battle against infection?
The specifics of each type of risk are, of course, varied. Depending upon their individual role the precautions each member of staff takes will vary as well. Here are a few examples of what the people caring for you will do:
Wear protective clothing such as gloves and aprons when handling bodily fluids, soiled linen and other waste
Thoroughly clean or sterilise equipment as necessary between each patient use
Ensure the highest level of hand hygiene by washing their hands, in the required manner and using the appropriate solution, before and after providing patients with any form of care. Please don’t be afraid to ask if staff and doctors have washed their hands or used an alcohol rub or gel
Follow strict cleaning regimes and schedules and respond quickly and effectively to any reports of spillages
Carry out audits to check that every prevention possible is in place and that they are working effectively
What is Clostridium difficile?
Clostridium difficile is a bacterium from the same family that causes other conditions such as tetanus. It does not grow in the presence of oxygen and produces spores that can survive for a long time in the environment. It lives in the large intestine, where there is little oxygen. It can be found in low numbers in less than 5% of the healthy adult population, where it is kept under control by the ‘healthy’ bacterial population of the intestine.
Why is it a problem?
Clostridium difficile can cause diarrhoea, ranging from a mild disturbance to a severe illness with ulceration and bleeding from the colon. It can lead to perforation of the intestine and peritonitis that could be fatal, although this is rare. Clostridium difficile infection occurs when antibiotics have destroyed the normal healthy intestinal bacteria allowing the Clostridium difficile bacteria to multiply in the intestine, which then produces toxins that damage the cells lining the intestine. It is this damage that causes the diarrhoea.
Patients who have been treated with antibiotics that have a wide range of actions are at greater risk of Clostridium difficile disease. Most of those affected are elderly patients with serious underlying disease. Most infections occur in hospitals, nursing homes etc but they can occur in a community setting.
How is Clostridium difficile spread?
Although some patients can be healthy carriers of Clostridium difficile, in most cases the disease spreads after cross infection from another patient, either through direct patient to patient contact, via health care workers, or via a contaminated environment. A patient who has Clostridium difficile diarrhoea excretes spores, which can contaminate the general environment around the patients’ bed and bathroom area, and clinical areas and equipment such as sluices, commodes, bedpan washers etc. They can survive for a long time and be a source of hand-to-mouth infection for others. If these people have been given antibiotics, they are at risk of Clostridium difficile infection.
Prevention and control of Clostridium difficile
Careful antibiotic prescribing to reduce the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics is a key component in the prevention of Clostridium difficile disease. Every BMI hospital has an antibiotic policy in place to reduce inappropriate prescribing.
Patients with diarrhoea, whether suspected of being Clostridium difficile or not are nursed with infection control procedures in place; which include the wearing of gloves and aprons, especially when dealing with bedpans etc. Strict handwashing practices are vital, as alcohol hand rubs commonly in place do not kill the spores. The patient environment will be cleaned to a high standard on a daily basis to reduce environmental contamination with the spores.
What is MRSA – Methicillin Resistant
Staphylococcus Aureus?
Staphylococcus Aureus is a common bacterium found in the nose and throat and on the skin of many people. It is more commonly found on skin that is broken, including cuts, sores or rashes such as eczema. Methicillin was the first antibiotic to which Staphylococcus Aureus became resistant, hence its name.
Why is MRSA a problem?
There are very few antibiotics that can successfully treat MRSA. The bacterium itself is a problem because when it enters the body (something which is more likely to happen to people who are already unwell) it can cause significant infection. MRSA can infect both accidental wounds (such as cuts and grazes) as well as those made during surgery.
If MRSA gets into a wound it can delay the healing process and the only antibiotics that can be used to fight it have to be used under medical supervision whilst the patient is monitored closely. The more often antibiotics are used the more likely the bacterium will be to develop resistance.
How is MRSA spread?
It is vital that MRSA is not transferred from one patient to another, causing cross infection. Direct person-to-person contact is the most common route of transmitting MRSA. It can also be spread through the air on flakes of skin that have fallen off the body. This is most common in hospitals where patients are in close proximity, unlike in BMI hospitals where patients have single rooms.
Can MRSA be treated?
Patients who carry MRSA (for instance on their skin or in their throat) but to whom it is doing no harm can be cleared using a programme of body and hair washing using antimicrobial solutions. Good personal hygiene, especially hand washing, should remove the bacteria successfully. If an infection developed a specific antibiotic regime would be planned and administered.
Are patients screened for MRSA?
Screening protocols exist for patients undergoing certain types of surgery and/or those who have previously been in high-risk environments.
