Public Health and Wellbeing

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

Antibiotic suppression reducing

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In a previous article I promised that I would share a measure of the improvement we are seeing in the clinical information on our request forms.   As you may know, the Hywel Dda University Health Board is committed to seeing reductions in all aspects of healthcare associated infections and has set themselves the target of reducing E coli bacteraemias by 20% as a global surrogate of all infections across our area.

Why is clinical information important?

Microbiology does not provide explicit answers to the question, “Does this patient have an infection?”  Our laboratories will grow bacteria but are bodies are … Read the rest

Little things

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Urine labI have just completed my on-call week.  As many will know our working pattern means one consultant is first on service for a seven day period.  This ensures a degree of continuity when we receive calls and are dealing with the acute services.  In this role, we are the first point of contact for enquiries and I thought therefore I would reflect on a couple of the highlights.

Little Thing #1:

One of my local GP’s rang to ask for a urine sensitivity result.  I am always at pains to be as helpful as I possibly can when I … Read the rest

Urine quality improves

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In a previous post I discussed the two simple rules that I ask colleagues to use to test interventions around the management of infections:

  • First do no harm
  • Second, find and take the positive action

All well and good offering this advice to others, but the challenge was also to me as a clinical microbiologist.  In discussions with my colleagues, we agreed that a large number of our E coli bacteramias were probably as a result of urinary associated infection and if we were to make a difference, we needed to take a closer interest in how we managed the … Read the rest

Gamekeeper turned Poacher

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Thank YouI had minor surgery today courtesy of the Day Care Unit in Prince Phillip Hospital. Thanks for asking, it was for a small umbilical hernia and all went well. However, the point of writing this is not to play the sympathy card but to take the opportunity to reflect on how I saw the unit work from a couple of perspectives: quality and infection, prevention and control because of course, professionally, these are two areas that engage a lot of my time.

It was interesting to be able to observe first hand our health systems in operation. Systems is key … Read the rest

Who’s taking the urine?

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UrinaryIsolatesOr who is responsible for sending urine samples to the laboratory and why?

I’ve used a variation of that title as part of the title for a number of presentations I’ve been giving across our local health board area, in an attempt to grab my audience attention.

What’s the issue?

Innapropriate use of antibiotics, particularly in our older population, to treat alledged urinary tract infection.  Indeed, this article is prompted by a conversation this morning with one of my biomedical scientists in the lab.  We were discussing the whole issue of interpretation of microbiology results and management of infection.  She … Read the rest