Public Health and Wellbeing

A collaboration between professionals in Microbiology and Infection Control serving West Wales

HCAI complexity rules

by 3 Comments

WSwabshen asking anyone to think about Healthcare Associated Infections and what actions they need to take, I ask them to apply 2 rules:

First: do no harm

Second: seek and take the positive action

First do no harm is not easy in dealing with infection because the actions we may need to take will often break this first rule and cause harm.   Seriously?   Yes, very seriously.   Take the apparently simple act of prescribing an antibiotic.   Antibiotics are not heat seeking pathogen missiles.   While they seek out a specific bacterial target, that target will usually be generic to many bacteria … Read the rest

Urine triggers

by Leave a Comment

Urine labOne of my lab scientists highlighted how a few years ago, when working in a smaller laboratory at a time when they were severely short staffed, they had to take the urgent decision to stop testing any urine sample that came into the laboratory without any clinical details.

There was a two fold effect: the absolute numbers of urine samples arriving in the laboratory, prior to any being rejected for lack of clinical information reduced and secondly, the clinical information on those samples arriving improved dramatically.

Some time later, the staffing situation improved and the lab felt able to stop … Read the rest