Health Bill

Hospital consultants and doctors wear white coats and tend to put them on when they go into hospital. Having worked as a nurse in the NHS for 10 years, I know that most doctors certainly did so to protect themselves from patients—consultants perhaps not so much, but they were a law unto themselves at the time. That does not mean that they should be excused from this. The practice of cleanliness in hospitals needs to be upgraded at every level to include nurses, doctors, consultants, hospital staff and everybody who has contact with the patient. Doctors usually wear white coats, and if they do not that is unforgivable. The practice of nurses wearing their uniforms to work and back and in the home environment indubitably contributes to MRSA, which costs the NHS about £1 billion a year. I received a copy of the draft code of practice this morning. One 10-word sentence on page 6 relates to staff uniforms. It says that they should be clean and fit for the intended purpose. We know full well that bacteria cannot be seen by the naked eye and that we cannot see a virus. If we could, there would be no MRSA in hospitals. We would not have search and destroy policies—they would be seek and destroy policies because we would be able to see them. As we cannot, how do we know whether a nurse’s uniform is clean? How can a ward manager know whether a uniform is clean? How do we know that the uniform that a doctor or nurse comes into hospital wearing was not the uniform that they wore to collect a child from school? How do we know whether that child has washed their hands all day? How do we know that they have not been sick or in contact with another child who has viruses or bacteria? How do we know that the nurse did not collect the child and get into a car that had been used by the family pets? Did the nurse then walk on to the ward in that uniform after collecting that child from school and driving in that car to a patient who is critically ill and in a vulnerable, immune-suppressed state? As we know, 25 per cent. of hospital infections are brought from communities into hospitals, and there is no doubt that a large proportion of that percentage is brought in by staff who use their work uniforms to go home. If there was an overall stipulation that staff who had direct contact with patients did not travel to and from work in their uniforms, I am sure that the figure of 25 per cent. would reduce dramatically. Prohibiting staff from travelling to and from work in uniform would be simple to introduce. It would have no cost implications for the Government and I am sure that it would save lives. Amendment No. 37 proposes that washing instructions should be made available to staff with regard to the safe home laundering of uniforms. That is based on my own research. I asked a number of staff who work in hospitals how they launder their uniforms. Replies varied from, ““I bung it on a wool wash because it’s navy and it runs””, to, ““I bung it on a wool wash because it’s white and falls to bits on a hot wash””, to, ““I’m a member of the Green party and I do all my washing on a cold wash.”” According to the guidelines for washing uniforms, none of those is correct. A cold wash is nowhere near sufficient to kill bacteria or viruses on uniforms. Would it not be easy and cost-effective, and would it not save lives, if notices in utility rooms and staff cloakrooms stated the correct washing instructions for nurses’ uniforms? The draft code of practice for the prevention and control of hospital-acquired infections is 28 pages long, and it is an improvement on the original version. Florence Nightingale had no such document when she went to the Crimea, yet she halved the death rate of soldiers from bacterial infections within weeks by raising standards of cleanliness and sanitation. Some things never change. We are facing exactly the same enemy—mutating bacteria in hospitals. If we had a policy of search and destroy and effective cleaning solutions that worked when they were used on wards, if we brought back state enrolled nurses and allowed no uniforms to be worn on the way to work, and if uniforms were laundered safely at home with proper instructions, I am sure that that would make a huge difference to MRSA rates. However, that is up to the Government and the Minister. I end on a note of caution. Yesterday, I met a lady who, unlike everyone else, will not accept the out-of-court settlement that she has been offered for contracting MRSA. She is taking the matter to the High Court. She realises that the cash settlement she gets will be less than that which the hospital trust has offered, but she wants to set a precedent so that others can litigate when they contract MRSA. I hope that the Minister will not let the problem reach the point when people are rushing to the courts. We can do better than a 10-word sentence about staff uniforms. From speaking to nurses, those who have contracted MRSA and people in the community, I know that they do not want nurses to go home in their uniforms. Nurses do not want to wear their uniforms to and from work and they readily say, ““If we were told not to, we wouldn’t.”” They said that changing rooms were not absolutely necessary. One nurse told me, ““I’d go to the cloakroom where I hang my coat and leave my bag.”” There is no reason for not imposing such a provision. I hope that the Minister will reconsider the draft code and what happens to nurses, their uniforms and the cleaning of those uniforms at home.