On Demand
The Brian Lehrer Show
Hospital Infections
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Dr. Betsy McCaughey, the former Lieutenant Governor of New York and now committee member of the Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths (RID), believes that infections happen all too often in hospitals.
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Comments
i often see hospital staff wearing scrubs on the subway and in the street smoking cigarette.
wouldnt this pose a problem in the er if these staff members are attending patients.
Does your guest recommend nutritional support to protect oneself?
For example, here's a study that showed a single 2.5 mg dose of Vitamin D3 protected against tuberculosis infection:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17463418&ordinalpos=11&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
Michael Savage invites real journalists to make the connection between nonscreening policies on the health of illegals and the sudden rise of omnipresent staph infections and other robust emergency room and hospital prevalent person to person diseases.
That's not a bad point. On Ellis Island, everyone was screened. Now, with the infection of neighborhoods of sudden new immigrants there is no such screen for such infection. This IS outrage brian!
Im so sure vitamins. Right. Sure.
Is it reasonable to ask hospital employees to wash their hands before treating every patient for non-surgical procedures? They're overworked and understaffed - the biggest problem with the system. I say pay doctors less, nurses more, and we'll be off to a better health care system.
In the UK male doctors were urged to stop wearing ties for this reason. Those ties almost NEVER get cleaned.
There are two things not taken into account in these studies is that Hospitals are supposed to heal and cure people who are sick.
(1) Hospitals do not take care of cleanliness. The cleaning crew have no concept of viruses and bacteria. At Beth Israel the cleaning crew uses the same mop and water used to clean the feces and urine smeared bathrooms to 'clean' the floors in the hospitals and the same cleansing cloths to clean the sinks used by the patients.
(2) Hospitals go out of their way to deprive people of sleep. After spending 10 days in a hospital I came down with terrible cold due to exhaustion because of the lack of sleep - Patients should be allowed to get 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep everyday so they can recuperate (of course there are patients in pain. But most are able to sleep if allowed to)
The physician and author Atul Gawande has written an entire chapter about hospital infections and the impact of germs carried by doctors who don't have time (or whatever) to wash their hands. I recommend reading it, I believe it's in the book Complications: A Surgeon's Notes. . .
Regarding the comment about keeping the patient warm, last year I had some emergency surgery and as I was being prepped I told them I didn't know if I was nervous or cold because I was shivering and they said that will be taken care of as they put some type of blanket that instantly warmed me.
Really? HOspitals force people not to sleep????? Hmmmmm.
I cannot believe what I am hearing. I'm a little disturbed by your guest in that she is putting the onus on the patient. I know she means well, but surely this is the responsibility of the hospitals and not the patients. Given the high cost of health care, it is outlandish that hospitals can get away with this. I remember what my father in Dublin said to me when we were visiting my mother in hospital the last time she was seriously ill. He commented that when the religious orders ran the hospitals they were spotless and that now that they use contract cleaners, the standards of cleanliness have dropped considerably. I went for surgery recently and it never crossed my mind to question the cleanliness of the hospital. There is enough anxiety involved in being in hospital without having to worry about what is surely the most basic of requirements.
How much should a woman be worried when she goes to a hospital for her regular GYN examination?
I agree with the first comment. I work and go to School at Columbia presbyterian. Technicians, nurses and physicians come to work on the subway in their scrubs. they are supposed to change into these clothes once they are inside the hospital. In addition, lunch time around here is a trip. The surgeons come out in their caps to get falafel.
www.michaelsavage.com on the spread of staph infections.
57% of MRSA is contracted outside of hospitals.
Interesting fact: Dr. McCaughey came to wide spread attention for her outspoken opposition to Hillary Clinton's first attempt at health care reform back in the 90s. She was among those responsible for killing it and along with any further meaningful discussion until lately. This propelled her into a (mercifully) short-lived political career.
But the problem of infectious disease transmission at hospitals is real. And has nothing to do with immigration. And her points are good ones -- despite her past.
Ahhhmmmmmmmmmmmmm Thank you for this segment??? I don't think I'll ever have another surgery. I'd rather die. Well, you know what I mean.
In addition, the best thing you can do is to tell people not to touch you. When I had a kidney transplant earlier this year, I was clear with physicians that they could not touch me or my incision. Many of them were offended, but who cares. I had no infections. At least the nurses use gloves.
GREAT COMMENTS ABOUT SCRUBS ON THE SUBWAY - I'M GONNA BE SURE TO CALL THEM OUT ON IT WHEN I SEE THEM - MAYBE GET THEIR NAME AND BADGE #!
SECONDLY, SO TRUE THAT THE PATIENT SHOULDN'T BE RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS, I'M SURE THAT THE STAFF WOULD LIE AND SAY, FOR E.G. THAT THEY DID WIPE THE STETHOSCOPE WITH ALCOHOL, BECAUSE THEY ARE SO UNDERSTAFFED, THEY REASON IT'S OK TO LIE!
To Herb and Slade:
Where do you get the idea that illegal immigrants are not screened for staph infections? Hospital screen everyone regardless of their legal status. YOu are again using illegal immigrants as scapegoats.
though I agree with your concerns and agree that poorer people may be more susceptible to contagious diseases, people coming from 3rd World countries get better care/coverage in their home countries regarding vaccinations and treatment for the most common contagious diseases.
Staph infections are more common in 'advanced' societies where there has been a large use of antibiotics. These types of infections are rare in 3rd World countries.
We should be concerned about immigrants not having access to preventive health care and very low wages as their health has a direct impact to everyone's health in that these are the people picking our fruits and vegetables, processing our beef and chickens and cutting these in the restaurants where we go eat. By pushing these people underground we are creating unsafe situations.
We need to work on reducing immigration but also in bringing the people already here into the open instead of pushing them further underground because this leads to more exploitation, crime and human rights abuses.
I visited a very sick friend at Sloan Kettering and I could not believe how dirty her bathroom was.
Dirtier than any hotel I've ever seen and neither she nor her "roommate" were mobile enough to use it! Made me wonder when it was last cleaned...
I've seen, while riding the subway to and from work many of what I can only assume are hospital workers, wearing hospital scrubs. I would look at them and wonder if it were a current fashion trend or were they really on their way to work carrying every germ know to man with them into the hospital. This should be illegal and grounds for extreme penalties. They should know better or care more for their patients than to do such a thing. I've seen them go to lunch and return bringing into clinics and hospitals germs and bacteria from off of the street. This can't continue unabated.
Topic for another show the conditions of Hospitals in the greater New York area and what the Department of Health accomplishes or doesn't when a patient or patient's family complains via the New York State Department of Health. From my experience you need to be in the medical profession to write up a complaint and be taken seriously. Then I incorrectly received the findings from another family's complaint and no one at the Department of Health ever got back to me after phone calls and speaking to personnel. From my experience there isn't enough oversight on the hospital's practices.
The point is not that they are not screened as illegal immigrants at hospitals, the point is that THERE IS NO SCREENING PROCESS FOR THEM COMING IN THE COUNTRY TOTALLY INFECTED WITH ALL THIS GARBAGE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1
This thread is closed.
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