The Recruiter's Blog

by Alan Charman

"If you want to get the inside oil on New Zealand employment (and social!) conditions, forget the Department of Labour and newspapers, read this blog!"

 

Note: The most important thing about this piece is that none of it should reflect badly on Marvellous Mary the Midwife, who delivered the baby. In a sea of incompetence and overwork, she shines as a beacon. Thank you, Mary, from the whole of our hearts!

Hygiene Measures in a Pandemic

10 July 2009

At 7.24 pm yesterday, my wife delivered a new son at Middlemore Hospital.

With heavily pregnant women being among the highest-risk groups for swine 'flu complications, we have been extremely cautious about her health, especially as she'd already struggled with a mild cold that she'd have normally shrugged off in a day.

Given the number of articles and anecdotal information on the pressure at General Practitioners throughout Auckland and NZ, I was keen to see how the only hospital to rack up two swine 'flu fatalities was coping.

The answer is simple: signage.

A gigantic sign adorns Middlemore's main entrance, advising people who have 'flu, or suspect so, to avoid the hospital unless referred by a GP. Along with this, the walls, windows and waiting rooms are also bedecked with exhortations to piss off home if you have 'flu or a gastric upset. When the signs have kept everyone infectious away, there are numerous signs over the walls and doors to ensure that staff wash their hands for at least 15 seconds.

They do manage to get past signage on one front - hand sanitisers, which rest in liberal amounts of receptacles around the wards. The birthing unit has a bottle of sanitiser at the door, with instructions to be used on entry to the ward. Alas, the instructions being on a sign, were, just like all the other signs, completely ignored.

In the face of these thousands of signs - I must try to call some manufacturers on Monday, they must be going great guns and need more people!

Now, I'm not going to complain about the ten-minute wait to even enter the birthing suite, as security measures are fairly necessary at places like Middlemore. I won't even mention the hassle of trying to get back in after hours when I'd briefly left at 10-30 pm to warm the car up.

I will, however, wonder why the head of the birthing unit bothered to wear gloves, when she wore them to answer four cellphone calls before and after examining my wife internally. Celllphones aren't usually regarded as all that clean, and if you're answering them and placing bodily fluids onto the keyboard, they're probably dirtier than you think.

The birthing room comes complete with a sink for the nurses to wash in, yet it received strangely little custom, with the norm being to come into the room and proceed as if one's hands were already clean. In a situation dealing with babies which are highly susceptible to diseases, it seems incredible that a hospital would not insist on better hygiene practices.

Another serious anomaly is that no type of screening was done to any visitor to enquire as to whether the visitors were free of infectious disease. I found it somewhat ironic that security measures meant that the doors are manned outside visiting hours by security personnel, but they had been given no instructions regarding infectious people.

Standing in the queue to re-enter the building at 10-30, it had gone well past irony when the elderly Maori couple seeking to gain entry to the ICU to visit a dying relative were hacking their lungs out like a couple of consumptives, yet given a pass to enter. I trust that other people in the ICU - especially those who expect to leave it still breathing - aren't infected by whatever bug they were clearly carrying.

How is it possible that one of the country's leading hospitals is so lax when it comes to hygiene?

It seems to me that if you want to stay free of infections, stay away from hospitals!