InFeCtion RAteS down 96% FRom tHen
In 2008, a year after the Healthcare Commission’s findings were published, bosses pledged to families the scandal would never happen again.
With falling infection rates, the woman responsible for keeping the trust’s promise on C-diff has much on which she can reflect.
Dr Sara Mumford took on the mantle of director of infection prevention and control in November 2007 when morale was at its lowest ebb.
She said: “I think the trust was slightly stunned. Having the media outside was very demoralising for staff because actually in between the outbreak occurring and the report being written they had already done a massive amount of work to improve the situation. Having it all come back again was a tough time for everybody.
“I was involved before I came here in what was then the Health Protection Agency, so we were involved in the outbreak investigation.”
She said the main causes were antibiotic prescribing and a recruitment freeze which was later lifted but left difficulties with staffing, and a higher workload meant less checking of cleaning.
Over the past decade MTW has seen infection rates fall by 96%. New training has been rolled out to staff, safeguards put in place and cutting edge technologies adopted.
These include hydrogen peroxide fogging, and using UV light to decontaminate wards and operating theatres.
MTW also screens most patient transfers for the superbug MRSA, with only one reported case in the past year.
Last year Dr Mumford shared MTW’s story with delegates from 30 countries at an international conference in Edinburgh.
She added: “We have a number of processes in place, such as surveillance so we are very good at spotting infections and identifying them early. We have a really good relationship between the microbiology laboratory and the infection control team which is important so they alert each other to issues and we get those early diagnoses. With these we could not have another C-diff outbreak in that way. There are new threats, I don’t want to say never, because there is so much unknown and there are new micro-organisms which have caused outbreaks at other trusts and have come out of the blue.”
She added: “We regret what happened and we have done everything possible to prevent anything like that happening again. It’s very sad and we feel for those families who have lost loved ones but we have had some relatives come back in to see what we have done and they have been very encouraged by the changes we have made and they are very encouraged we are doing the right thing.”