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Sunday, 23 July 2006 09:19

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Nurses ignore hygiene

According to a study to be published in the Journal of Hospital Infection hospital staffs are failing to wash their hands after touching patients carrying the superbug MRSA.

In a study by Elizabeth Jenner and Ben Fletcher from Hertfordshire University, they followed 71 staff on a hospital ward over a week, with some of the patients they cared for being in isolation because they were known to have the MRSA infection.

They found that on 22 per cent of occasions, staffs failed to wash their hands after contact with MRSA patients, increasing the risk that it would be spread to the next patient they touched - despite the fact that the staff knew they were being observed.

While studying more than 1,000 occasions when nurses and doctors came into contact with patients, they also found that for a quarter of that time, they also failed to wash after contact with patients' faeces and, for 38 per cent of the time, failed to wash their hands after contact with blood. All these factors increase the risks of germs spreading on a ward.

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