Do hospital patients prefer single rooms?

We mentioned in last week’s blog that our neighbour is currently in hospital, recovering from a heart operation.  I’m pleased to report she is doing well.

 

She is lucky enough to have her own room in hospital.  Interestingly, the Tories have just announced at their conference that, if they are elected, they will create an extra 45,000 single rooms in hospitals by the end of their first term.  That sounds like an ambitious target – and apparently the cost would be around £1.5billion.

 

Visiting our neighbour reminded us how civilised it is to be in a single room – provided that’s what you want, of course.  We must not forget that many hospital patients prefer the companionship of a larger ward.

 

We run A Friend in Need, a website sending gifts to people in hospital on behalf of friends and family who can’t visit the patient in person.  If more patients do find themselves in single rooms in future, and so have less contact with other patients, perhaps they will be even more demand for gifts from the outside world.

Now we know what it’s like to be one of our customers

We are learning this week what it’s like to be one of our customers.

 

We run A Friend in Need, a website sending gifts to people in hospital on behalf of friends and family who can’t visit the patient in person.

 

Our next-door neighbour, who is also a dear friend, has gone into hospital to have two replacement valves fitted in her heart.  She was operated on yesterday and is now in Intensive Care.  The hospital is a very good one but is in London.

 

We hope we’ll be able to visit her while she’s still in hospital, but it’s not an easy journey.  So, just in case we don’t make it to see her, we’re busy choosing a gift off the website that we can send her!

The teddy bears have their pictures taken

We took supply of a new consignment of teddy bears this week.  It’s always fun getting in new stock, but somehow cuddly toys are the most fun of all.

 

Because the manufacturers have slightly changed the design and appearance of the bears, we had a photo shoot of the new stock.  Well, it was a good excuse, because that’s actually where a lot of the fun comes in – positioning all the cuddly toys ready to have their pictures taken, finding their best angles and deciding on the most appealing shots.

 

The reason we do this is that we run A Friend in Need, a website sending gifts to people in hospital on behalf of friends and family who can’t visit the patient in person.  And among our most popular gifts are cuddly toys, and the most popular cuddly toy of all – perhaps not surprisingly – is the teddy bear, the perennial lucky mascot

 

Let’s hope visitors to the website will appreciate our photographic skills – and perhaps sense the fun we had taking the pictures!

MRSA deaths at last start to fall

I mentioned in the blog last week that the number of deaths in hospitals as a result of Clostridium difficile rose dramatically (by 28%) between 2006 and 2007.  Some people have pointed out, however, that I didn’t stress strongly enough that in the same period the number of deaths from the superbug MRSA actually fell.

 

The reduction wasn’t staggering – deaths fell from 1,652 in 2006 to 1,593 in 2007, a drop of around 3.5%.  But this was the first time that the number has fallen since records began in 1993, and it is therefore cause for optimism that hospitals are now seriously tackling the problem.

 

We’ve written before about MRSA and pointed to some of the precautions that hospital staff always take.  We’ve emphasised how important it is that visitors to hospitals realise that they too can spread MRSA – for instance if they don’t .wash their hands or rub them with alcohol gel before entering and after leaving a ward.  .

 

Our interest in this stems partly from the fact that we run A Friend in Need, a website sending gifts to people in hospital on behalf of friends and family who can’t visit the patient in person. 

 

Not visiting in person might be the surest way of not spreading MRSA, but we don’t seriously advocate that unless a friend or relative really can’t make the journey.  Sensible precautions are the answer, and it looks as though at long last the message is getting through to hospital visitors and the precautions are starting to have some effect.

C. difficile: Why have there been more deaths?

You may have heard the news story this week that the number of deaths in hospitals as a result of Clostridium difficile (C. difficile) increased by 28% between 2006 and 2007.  The good news that accompanied this was that the number of deaths from MRSA fell slightly over the same period, but that does not mask the fact that a 28% rise in C. difficile deaths would appear to be cause for grave concern.

 

One explanation may be that C. difficile was reported more accurately in 2007 than in 2006.  It seems that the disease was often recorded as a contributing factor on death certificates.  This is borne out by the fact that there has actually been a reduction in the overall number of C, difficile cases (whether death resulted or not). 

 

We take a keen interest in all matters that affect the wellbeing of hospital patients, mainly because we run A Friend in Need, a website sending gifts to people in hospital on behalf of friends and family who can’t visit the patient in person. 

 

Let us hope that better recording is indeed the reason behind this worrying statistic, rather than a higher incidence of the disease itself.