Nurses contract bacterium at hospital

The three nurses who work on ward six tested positive for MRSA following a swab test on the ward’s nurses last Wednesday. Ward six is one of the hospital’s surgical wards.

The infection of the nurses prompted other nurses on the surgical ward to protest on Monday. The nurses staged a sick-out and did not report for duty. Yesterday, some of the nurses demanded that patients who are to be admitted to the ward be screened. MRSA is usually found on the skin and in the noses of healthy people and is spread via abrasions, cuts, wounds, surgical incisions or through catheters (tube inserted into the body) by doctors when examining patients. Early symptoms of infection are pimples or boils on the body. The bacterium can spread to the bloodstream, bones and joints. A series of antibiotics are normally administered to treat the infection.

SFGH’s medical director Dr Austin Trinidade yesterday confirmed the infection of the three nurses. He said: “At present a committee is being set up to deal with carriers of the MRSA infection.”

Another medical source said doctors, nurses and health care workers were assured by the hospital’s micro-biology department that patients would be tested for MRSA. “Clearly, the results have shown otherwise,” the source said. Trinidade said it was impossible to screen each patient admitted to the institution. It takes 48 hours, he added, to get results from the tests.

Saying that it was not the first time hospital employees had contracted MRSA, Trinidade said the hospital did not have a rigid policy in place to deal with the spread of the bacterium. “We have had several cases before and we had dealt with the situation. Health care workers are screened frequently and anyone found to be infected are treated immediately,” Trinidade said.