Maintain pressure on reforms to protect NHSHospital ward closes after C diff death
A ward in a Scottish hospital has been closed to new patients after C diff infection was implicated in the death of one patient being treated on the ward, and five others were diagnosed with the virus.
The ward at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary housed 13 patients and NHS Grampian has now set up a control outbreak team to try to contain the infection.
Made up of senior doctors, nurses and managers, the team has introduced enhanced ward cleaning and a review of antibiotic prescribing.
C diff was given as ‘one of a number of secondary factors’, in the death of the patient who died. Following treatment, one of the patients with C difficile was well enough to be discharged on Thursday.
A spokesman for NHS Grampian said none of the four remaining patients were ‘giving cause for concern’.
Alisdair Chisholm, general manager for acute services at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, said: ‘We are working very hard to control the risk of spread of infection, and have decided to take the short-term step of not admitting new patients to the ward, to allow us to focus on this.’
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Readers' comments (2)
Anonymous | 1-Jul-2009 11:40 pm
"Made up of senior doctors, nurses and managers, the team has introduced enhanced ward cleaning and a review of antibiotic prescibing."
Sorry but should this practice not have taken place years ago??
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Anonymous | 3-Jul-2009 8:10 am
Clostridium difficile is referred to as a virus in this article. I would have hoped that a leading nursing journal would be able to correctly identify an organism which is the subject of a national target and of key concern to patients. C. difficile is a spore producing bacterium.
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