Blood, Sweat & Tea, page 139 by Tom Reynolds
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se when she breathed in, she had a slight temperature and, coupled with the cough and no history of heart problems, it seemed like a simple chest infection.
The patient and her daughter were happy with this provisional diagnosis, but were glad that she would be going to hospital for some more tests.
...But then the daughter asked me where her mother could have caught her chest infection... and I really didn't want to say 'from the hospital'.
I imagine that the ward from which the patient had been discharged had one or more people with a chest infection. Having worked in a hospital I know that a lot of patients, and their visitors, don't cover their mouths when they cough, and it seems completely reasonable that this is where the patient caught this infection.
It is probably unrelated to nurse or doctor hygiene (as these sorts of infection are often airborne) but instead caused by something as simple as someone not covering their mouth when coughing. It might not have been another patient - hospital wards see a lot of visitors, including small children who are constantly exposed to, and incubating infections.
It seems to me that a lot of hospital infections could be cut if patient visitors didn't treat the ward like some form of hotel, tracking their infections in and out of the community, and generally acting as if the rules of hygiene don't apply to them. I'm a big fan of restricted visiting for the majority of cases - and is there really any reason for children to be dragged around a hospital at all hours of the day.
It used to drive me barmy when I was running a ward.
However, medical staff do indeed need to improve their hand washing.
Flat
<<Insert Fig 7>>
So there I was, pulling up to a job (male fitting in street), the ambulance was already there (having been dispatched from the same station as me, only 2minutes earlier).
Then I heard a loud bang, and thought the bottom had dropped off the car - the crew on scene and th