
Why demonstrating nurses who wear uniforms in the street are reckless and lethal
Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc
Antibiotic resistant organisms are a huge problem in hospitals – particularly NHS hospitals.
Poor hygiene and a failure to understand how infections spread mean that dangerous antibiotic resistant bugs are a major killer in hospitals.
At least 1 in 20 hospital patients pick up infections in the hospital where they are being treated – and many die from hospital acquired infections. (Death certificates written by hospital doctors rarely tell the truth. For example, a patient will be said to have died of a `chest infection’ rather than a `hospital acquired chest infection’.)
Consider staphylococcus for example. In 1952, virtually all staph infections could be cured by penicillin. Today, most patients with a staph infection need treatment with other antibiotics.
MRSA and C.difficile are incredibly difficult to treat because of antibiotic resistance.
It now takes 50 times as much penicillin to treat an infection as was required a few decades ago.
The huge danger is that the killer antibiotic resistant infections which are responsible for many hospital deaths will escape and become a threat in the outside community.
Back in 1977, in my book `Paper Doctors’ I warned that two things would result in a rise in infectious diseases: a lack of hygiene in hospitals and the abuse of antibiotics. I also predicted the rise in antibiotic resistant organisms.
It has all happened.
And these resistant bugs are already escaping from hospitals.
Nurses and other hospital staff should never, ever leave the hospital where they work while still wearing the uniforms they wear on the wards or operating theatres.
And yet that is exactly what demonstrating nurses are doing.
They will inevitably spread antibiotic resistant organisms outside hospitals.
The problem with antibiotic resistance will rocket as a direct result.
If nurses want to demonstrate they should do so in their own clothing – not in hospital garb.
But that wouldn’t make them quite so photogenic, would it?
Copyright Vernon Coleman December 2022
For more information about doctors, nurses and hospitals read Vernon Coleman’s book `Why and how doctors kill more people than cancer’ – which is available as a paperback on Amazon.
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