How our hospitals failed, by top nurse
SCOTLAND’s most senior nurse has highlighted a catalogue of failings which have allowed coronavirus to rampage through hospitals.
Chief nursing officer Amanda Croft warned lessons must be learned to prevent further spread.
More than 5,000 Scots contracted the virus while in hospital for other illnesses, figures reveal.
More than 1,000 of them died – over 10 per cent of all deaths following a positive test.
Now, in a memo seen by this newspaper, Ms Croft has outlined a number of staff practices which she fears have contributed to the spread of Covid in hospitals.
She said that patients may have been unnecessarily exposed to the virus by being moved around wards too often.
Ms Croft also said the reuse of single-use PPE, such as gloves and aprons, by staff to care for different people throughout the day could have spread infection. She has called on doctors and nurses to re-read national infection control guidelines – as she said some had been wearing the wrong type of face masks in ‘high-risk’ Covid environments.
Ms Croft pointed to new evidence which suggests hospital staff rooms have become a breeding ground for infection. She said she was aware of staff removing their PPE and neglecting to socially distance while on their tea and lunch breaks.
And she warned NHS doctors and nurses to stop car-sharing to and from work unless absolutely necessary, as she said there had been ‘several instances reported where Covid-19 transmission has been hypothesised as resulting from staff car-sharing’.
Last night opposition parties said the Scottish Government was to blame, rather than the NHS. Scottish Conservative health spokesman Donald
Cameron said: ‘It is clear that SNP Ministers did not learn from mistakes they made during the first wave and have failed to put in place robust measures to stop the virus spreading again in our hospitals.’
Scottish Labour deputy leader Jackie Baillie said the failures ‘lie at the feet of the Scottish Government’.
Ms Croft, former chief executive of NHS Grampian, took over from Professor Fiona McQueen as chief nursing officer last month. She wrote to all NHS frontline staff, stating they must continue to reduce the risk of Covid infection in hospitals.
Ms Croft wrote: ‘Evidence suggests that areas where staff congregate socially tend to be particularly highrisk in terms of transmission.’
So far, 3,643 people have contracted coronavirus while in hospital, with an additional 1,631 ‘probably’ contracting it there. It means 5,274 Scots are likely to have caught Covid while being treated for other conditions.
Last year, 1,015 people were classed as likely to have died from the virus after becoming infected in hospital.
Prior to the election period, the Scottish Government said it regularly provided health boards with ‘updated information based on new and emerging evidence, best practice and lessons learned in order to continually drive improvement’.
‘SNP Ministers did not learn from mistakes’