Monday 5 January 2009

Hospital warned over hygiene flaws

It’s been a tricky start to 2009 for staff at Homerton University Hospital – they’ve just been slapped with a serious warning to improve their hygiene standards.

This week the Hackney-based hospital admitted that the Healthcare Commission dropped by unannounced and were not impressed.

As a result of the flaws the visit exposed, the hospital says it has created a new team whose priority is to have the improvement notice lifted by the end of this month.

One of the concerns raised was that dirty bed pans were found in a ward and commodes had not been fully cleaned.

While this sloppiness in this ward might disappear within a month, the core issue, surely, is whether the staff are fully trained and being properly supervised?

Not so. The hospital has also had to explain that it does not have good records to show that people have had training; a number of planned audits were not completed.

On the positive side, the cleaners probably have the fateful HC visit to thank because there will now be a new electronic system for recording training.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

The problem with hospitals using private cleaning companies, like Homerton University Hospital has, is that due to high turnover many cleaning companies don't bother to train staff properly.

The high turnover stems from the rotten pay and lack of equipment. Polly Toynbee wrote about this in her book on low paid working "Hard Work".

Cleaners in hospitals should be paid by the National Health Service, run by the NHS (which would allow them to join UNISON, which covers NHS workers) and trained by the NHS.