Plans to fight hospital superbugs
Health Secretary Alan Johnson has unveiled a raft of new measures aimed at tackling the spread of potentially fatal hospital "superbugs".
His plans include a more stringent dress code for healthcare workers and a legal duty forcing executives to report cases of infection to the Health Protection Agency.
Matrons will also now be able to provide boardrooms with frontline accounts of the fight against the hospital-acquired infections such as Clostridium difficile and MRSA.
There have been concerns that their views were not getting through to managers, but now they will have the right to report directly to hospital boards four times a year.
The guidance on clothing will see the introduction of a new "bare below the elbows" dress code, meaning no sleeves, watches or jewellery can be worn.
It also advises healthcare staff against wearing a tie during clinical work and could spell the end for the traditional doctors' white coat because it warns they should not "normally" be worn as the cuffs are likely to be very contaminated.
Hospitals are also to receive new clinical guidance about isolating patients who do become infected with C.difficile or MRSA.
This will mean more single rooms being used and more "cohort nursing" - where patients suffering from the same infection are nursed together.
Chief executives will be legally required to report all MRSA bacteraemias and C.difficile infections to the HPA and will commit an offence and be fined if they fail to do so.
The "cleanyourhands" campaign is also to be rolled out to ambulances, primary care, mental health and care trusts, and care homes and hospices. This will begin as a pilot in 19 "pioneer" organisations throughout England and Wales.
