Superbug tsar hired to rid Mersey hospitals of infection

Oct 16 2007 by Liza Williams, Liverpool Daily Post

A SUPERBUG tsar has been hired to stamp out infections like MRSA and C difficile at two Liverpool hospitals.

Dr Godfrey Smith, consultant microbiologist at the Royal Liver-pool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust, has been appointed as the lead doctor for the prevention of infections.

It is part of a new drive by the Trust to stamp out hospital acquired infections like C difficile which is on the rise at the Royal and Broadgreen, according to latest figures from the Health Protection Agency.

In the first three months of this year the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen hospitals had an un-precedented 195 cases of C Diff, a 58% increase on the 124 people diagnosed the same time in 2006.

Dr Smith will lead a programme of overhauling the way antibiotics are administered and employ a team of nurses to train staff about hygiene issues.

He said: “There is no reason why we cannot become one of the top ten performing hospitals in the country for preventing and reducing hospital acquired in- fection rates in the next year. I am determined to ensure this is what we achieve for our patients.”

Working with the Trust’s Infection Control Team, Dr Smith has spent the past two weeks reviewing what the Trust has done so far. The result has been the development of a 10-point plan, which was this week accepted by the Trust’s most senior clinicians. A total of £420,000 will be invested over the next 12 months to fund the plans.

The announcement of Dr Smith’s appointment comes in the same month the Trust hosted a visit by a specialist team of experts from the Department of Health, which reviewed it’s progress on reducing infections.

The team said the hospital had made strides in Renal services, Intensive Care and Vasc- ular Surgery. But the team high-lighted some areas where improvements need to be made, for example more frequent audits of hand hygiene should be implemented.

Dr Smith said: “We have to start seeing infection as an insult to our patients. The culture of the Trust must be that infection is out of the ordinary. We’ve made great strides on both fronts but we must do more and do it faster.

“We will focus on building on the good things we do while imp- roving in areas where we are weak. I want to deliver services where there are no infections and we will adopt a zero tolerance approach to achieve it.”

He added: “We also need our patients to adopt the same attitude so I will be encouraging them to chal- lenge us while staying in, and/or visiting, our hosp- itals. But equally they must work with us and use alcohol gel dispensers. These are two areas where patients and visitors can start to make a difference themselves. ”

lizawilliams