Miracle Cure: Hygienic Techniques

"In Focus: A National Look at Sepsis" has come to a truly interesting conclusion resulting from data procured through Hospital Standardized Mortality Ratio, tracking patient mortality in hospitals as a method by which the standard of care can be measured. And hospitals, which most people have always assumed to be the safest haven when people are ill and require medical care, turn out to be, in fact, institutions which threaten the very lives of people whom they are dedicated to safe-guarding.

There is nothing particularly new in all of this, but it would actually appear that matters are deteriorating, even while it is generally accepted that hospitals are not at all presenting as sterile and clean environments. Carelessness likely causes more hospital deaths than any disease for which people have been admitted for amelioration of condition. Surgical and other medical devices not adequately sterilized. Germ-laden surfaces not properly cleaned.

And there we go again; doctors, nurses and other health-care professionals not bothering to wash their hands between one patient and another, one procedure or another, or even while themselves using bathroom facilities. It's a no-brainer; most mothers teach their children to diligently wash their hands before and after meals, and most certainly after using a toilet facility. Despite which, those same children, become adult, lapse into stupidity.

The claim can be made that there are insufficient health professionals to treat a growing population. To make matters worse, a growing population of the elderly, as Canada ages. There are too-few health dollars, too few resources to adequately treat all those who require the kind of care we demand. Operating cut-backs have resulted in fewer custodians to do the required in-depth-cleaning such institutions need.

Doctors and nurses, rushing from one surgery, one appointment, one patient to another, have less time to devote to irritating practises that only cut down on their time to respond. Hospital emergency rooms burgeon with the ill awaiting treatment, and spreading their germs and viruses generously on every surface they touch. Which, needless to say, the doctors and nurses who haven't bothered adequate cleansing, also do their share of.

But this is a priority issue!

Severe infections in the last year resulted in 9,320 deaths in Canadian hospitals (the province of Quebec was excluded from this report issued by the Canadian Institute for Health Information. And there has been ample evidence reported in such deaths in Quebec hospitals to assure that it operates no more conscientiously than hospitals in other provinces.) There were fewer deaths in hospital as a result of strokes and heart attacks.

The report pointed out that 25% of sepsis patients were diagnosed after hospital admission. Further, that those who developed sepsis while in the hospital setting were a whopping 56% likelier to die than those who acquired the infection pre-admission. "We know there's a lot that can be done in terms of prevention in hospitals. We think we can reduce mortality", according to the institute's director of performance measures.

The fingers point at doctors and nurses primarily. Simple handwashing, cleansing of equipment and rooms to prevent the spread of infections leading to deadly sepsis. Along with early recognition of infection and alacrity in treatment them with antibiotics. People with weakened immune systems; in other words the most vulnerable of a hospital's population are prone to advancing from a mild infection to a serious, life-threatening one.

Hospital administrations who take this issue seriously can make a huge difference. There are currently three hospitals in disparate parts of the country which have launched an aggressive plan to identify and treat sepsis on a priority basis, to lower mortality rates among hospital patients. A downward trend in such deaths has resulted. What several hospitals dedicate themselves to, all others must recognize as a necessity.

Lives depend on it.