American toilets

[Helen Deborah Vecht]

Guy King typed

You're obviously not big enough...

[Brian Reay]

Not meant as a "dig" at the NHS but why was it suddenly necessary to make mopping the corners easier? In the "old days", we didn't have the disinfectants we have now, and people generally were not so clean (MRSA is carried into hospitals I understand, rather than always being there), but we didn't have this sort of problem. I know that these bugs are resistant to anti-biotics, and that this resistance develops over time, but surely, in the old days, there was enough time, use of anti-biotics, not to mention less understanding of the pathology, to allow things like MRSA to develop?

Brian

[Jerry]

posters can't

You are the sock puppet, one of Thatcher's many...

[Mike Barnes]

Once I didn't reflect, and it was a pretty scary experience. I looked up from washing my hands, and there was the entire gents toilet reflected in the mirror, without me in it.

Made me come over all peculiar, I can tell you.

After what seemed like an age but probably amounted to a second or two, I realised that there was no mirror; there were two rows of basins back- to-back in the middle of a more-or-less symmetrical room.

[Mary Fisher]

No, it puts you in the same sinsible category as us and it's better for the environment too.

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

I haven't.

Yes, no water involved at all.

Mary

[Mary Fisher]

Oh Andy! You just don't recognise that his intellect is so superior to everyone else's that we can't be expected to understand it.

Mary

[Jerry]

Do you use soap?

[Owain]

Because even Albanians won't get on their knees with a scrubbing brush for £5 an hour when they can get £50 for 30 minutes being a different sort of scrubber.

No, we had scrubbing brushes, and scouring powder, and instead of low temp washes and drip-dry polyester we had boil washed cottons, steam ironed till crisp, and above all we had Matron and No Nonsense.

Owain

[Derek ^]

That's not a new idea. We had it in the showers at school Ca 1958.

Little by little since the war they have continuously lowered the basic standards of hygiene in NHS hospitals and relied on antibiotics to bale them out of the clag (so to speak). Naturally over use of antibiotics has let to resistance.

have been moved closer together, (worse than that, in fact down to rock bottom with PFI, beds so close together that feeler guages are needed to get a crash trolley between the beds), and cleaning has been reduced. More and more visiting has been allowed as standards of cleanliness, behaviour and discipline in the community at large have plummeted. So today we get visitors (often with a small child) going to a hospital toilet that is swimming in bodily wastes and then going to visit a sick relative, sitting on the bed and putting their feet up on the counterpane and allowing the child, when it gets bored, to wander round all the other beds talking to the other patients one after another. Is there any wonder there is a lot of infection.

Antibiotics did not became available to the general populace untill well after WW2. None for me when I had a mastoid infection in 1952.

The basic principles of infection control were known in Florence Nightingales days. They used simple good housekeeping measures, space between patients beds, isolation of infected patients, lots of Hypochlorite Bleach, and Phenolic Disinfectants.

My father in law died of MRSA infection in St James's Hospital, Leeds in the most appalling squallor. A venerable old lady in the next side ward kept asking us about his condition, she was in for a hip replacement, which had been successful and fortunately without infection. She said she was still driving and had driven ambulances during the war (when resources were limited and circumstances trying) but in all her experience she had *never* seen a place as filthy. The lift that took the patients down to theatre (accessible to the public) was like a hoist in a rendering plant, spilt liquids, general litter were never cleaned/removed in the 6 weeks we were visiting Father in law. The area of floor under the lift buttons was worn through 2 layers of industrial vynil and (more worrying ) 3 laminations of plywood. 8-(((

Somebody will be along here in minutes to microseconds saying it's all Thatchers fault, it's because cleaning was privatised, but that's tosh. All (most of ?) our private shopping malls are cleaned by private cleaners on contract. Compare with a toilet in John Lewis. The difference is that the NHS will put it out to tender and just take the lowest bid. 2 or 3 bludgers off the dole queue will home in on the fact that £30k seems to be fantastic amount of money to clean (say) 4 wards in a hospital for a year, so they put a bid in.

No sooner have they accepted the contract that they find they have to pay for the necessary insurances, say £2,000,000 in public liabilty insurance, + employer's liability + +, buy and maintain 2 or more vehicles and 2 or more sets of cleaning equipment, and pay for their consumables and find cover during sick/holidays.

It turns out they can't do it so they cut corners and this is not detected (Like the dead bodies in the lady's toilets) because the staff have become de-sensitised to working in circumstances like that.

[Bob Eager]

Actually, he comes across as Drivel, but without the benefit of having attended nursery school...

[Guy King]

The message from [e-mail] (Richard Tobin) contains these words:

I stop to contemplate occasionally.

[Guy King]

The message from Andy Hall contains these words:

If I wash my hands under running water for ten seconds then use soap the water coming off is very grubby the second time.

[Jerry]

antibiotics

down

have

Yes, very true, but who started all this crap were accountants were allowed to tell the medical staff how to run the hospital - it's akin to allowing the in-mates to run the asylum...

[Guy King]

The message from Andy Hall contains these words:

Challenge them on it. I did in Maidstone Hospital when Mum was in there over Christmas. A cleaner didn't wash her hands and one of the nurses heard me asking him to and gave him a rocket.

[Guy King]

The message from Mike Barnes contains these words:

That /is/ scary!

I lost the glass out of a motorbike mirror once. They're backed with black rubber - very black indeed. I accelerated out of Otford[1] and glancing in the mirror before overtaking a car found that the world behind me had disappeared into a black hole. Only lasted a second or so, but it was very very scary.

[1] Though in retrospect it was a nice place, as a teenager, accelerating out of Otford seemed like the best thing to do.

[Owain]

Not exactly; inmates probably have a fairly good idea on how to run an asylum. Perhaps if they allowed the *patients* to run the hospital ...

Owain

[<me9]

160C for an hour.

[cramerj]

Isn't alcohol better ( applied I mean) - Is not this common practice in some hospitals? Assuming that they know what they are doing.

[Andy Luckman (AJL Electronics)]

Trust I'm not teaching granny etc.....

Don't take the airport bus then. Very pricy. The train, which has a coastline route is about a quarter of the price. Take the airport bus to Nice Gare, 4 Euros, then the train runs quite often to Cannes.

If you want to eat at a sensible price, go back into Nice old town!