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Ward set aside for superbug patients
AN ISOLATION ward for patients with the hospital superbug clostridium difficile has been created at the DGH – and currently has 12 patients.
East Dean ward, a former medical ward with 15 beds, has been set aside to contain people with the infection and stop it spreading.
The DGH, which has until now only used individual rooms to isolate patients, created the special ward on February 16 in response to a higher number of patients than usual with clostridrium difficile associated disease (CDAD).
In January, 20 cases of CDAD were reported by East Sussex Hospitals Trust at its Eastbourne and Hastings hospitals, above the limit set by the South East Coast Strategic Health Authority but still within the national target.
This figure included an outbreak in Berwick ward, where the refusal of one patient to undertake treatment or to be isolated from other patients was thought to have contributed to the spread.
In the majority of cases, a trust spokesman said, patients agree to be isolated but this patient initially refused to be moved until persuasive staff intervened, allowing clean-
ing to be done. The ward has since been fully deep-cleaned.
Infection control training is given to all staff at East Sussex Hospitals Trust, which runs the DGH and Conquest Hospital in Hastings, but staff at the DGH are at a disadvantage, with all infection training done online.
The Conquest provides face-to-face consultant-led sessions.
The online national infection control training programme, which is mandatory for staff, takes three and a half hours to complete and can be done in one or a number of sittings at a computer.
The lack of person-led training at the DGH is due to understaffing but the trust plans to reinstate it.
"The trust's levels of clostridium difficile infections are lower than the national average," its spokesman added.
"However, over recent weeks we have experienced a higher than usual number of patients admitted with respiratory infections requiring antibiotic therapy, which has contributed to the increased requirement for patients requiring isolation."
East Dean ward will remain an isolation ward temporarily and its use will be reviewed at a later date. Evidence from other hospitals around the country, the trust spokesman said, had shown isolation wards to be successful in reducing the threat to patients' health of clostridium difficile.
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Weather for Eastbourne
Saturday 04 February 2012
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