Hospital board meetings need to focus more on patient care to avoid repeats of the superbug outbreaks in west Kent, according to one of the country’s leading health campaigners.
Baroness Audrey Emerton of Tunbridge Wells and Clerkenwell, was awarded a life peerage after a long and distinguished career in nursing.
She visited Benenden Hospital, which is an independent hospital near Cranbrook, to mark National Nurses Day on Monday last week.
The day is held is celebration of the birthday of Florence Nightingale.
Baroness Emerton said: “She died 98 years ago and yet we still celebrate her birthday – the reason is her legacy.
“It is because of her basic standards in nursing, basic hygiene, nutrition and care. Florence Nightingale, of course, invented hygiene in the Crimean War.
“She set up the foundation of the nursing profession.”
Hygiene, comfort and compassion for patients were the cornerstones of Nightingale’s Notes of Nursing and remain vital today, she said.
KOS Media is currently running a campaign to promote good hygiene practices in hospital and healthcare centres across Kent.
Baroness Emerton agreed that hygiene was hugely important if infection rates of superbugs such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile were to be kept down.
She spoke to nurses at Benenden about their work and congratulated the hospital on winning Top Independent Employer in the recent Nursing Times awards.
The hospital has not had one case of MRSA or C diff since 2000, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Asked what she thought the key to its success was, Baroness Emerton said: “Well, I suppose small is beautiful.
“The place is spotless and hand hygiene is available for everyone. What is interesting is that their cleaners are all their own employees. They are not contracted.
“The ward sisters can control their own environment.”
She said it was difficult in the NHS for modern matrons to have the same control over cleaning staff because often they are not contracted to the hospitals themselves.
Baroness Emerton said she has been running her own campaign for the past four years to make high quality care a feature a priority from the member of staff treating the patient right up to the board room.
She said that was the problem at Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust’s hospitals, where 90 patients died in two outbreaks of the superbug C diff.
“Management did not know what was going. My campaign is to re-establish a care line from the patients to the board and back again.”
Her research showed that out of 60 NHS board meetings only 14 per cent mentioned patient care rather than just financial targets.
Baroness Emerton is contributing to Lord Darzi’s review of the NHS and she spoke about nutrition as an example of her campaign during a debate in the House of Lords on Thursday.
POSTED: 18/05/2008 06:00:00