Jul. 21, 2002 - 23:10 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

The Old Enemy?

I have been circulating in my mind trying to try to do a somewhat time line thing on the Depression and Dust Bowl. It is too vast, I must condense and haven't got the battle plan straight yet. The whole thing a is a massive convergence of disasters.

A whole page in our newspaper today on deaths due to infections in hospitals, or where infection is a contributing factor to a death. Artical is by Michael J Berens of the Chicago Tribune in The Denver Post - Sunday July 21, 2002 Really gets to me, this. It has been discovered that there is a term that is used to smoke screen disclosure of infections that happen in hospitals. Nosocomial. Nosocomial infection a term thought up by our highly regarded CDC no less. Nosocomial is Latin for the word 'hospital' now ain't that a hoot ?

Egregrious things such as dust floating in the air in an operating room, flys present. Lack of handwashing by staff. Wearing street clothes into surgery.

A lot of this is blamed on understaffed and undertrained cleaning people. Shortage of nurses. Speed up tactics. Why ?

Cost cutting, financial effectiveness, profitablilty. Bean counter henchmen for the brass above it appears.

It has been mentioned before in many ways referring to many things by many wise folk. "You get what you pay for." It seems to me that we are all guilty for that condition to a certain extent. As patients I think we have been trying to get too much for too little expense. When I first went into Kaiser in 1977 the fee was two dollars a visit and two dollars a prescription. It seemed that everyone in town was in any Kaiser facility I went to and we were rubbing elbows and trying to find a seat in the waiting rooms. Could it be that our society has bred a bunch of doctor junkies ? Were doctors writing prescriptions that weren't necessary so that the questionnaire on their service sent to patients would be affirmatively answered ?

But malaise struts the land I guess and seems to rub off on all of us from CEO's to janitorial folk.

Bad cleaning staff and supervision, not enough nurses, does that begin to give doctors and assistants a philosopical, "What the hell, they are all going to die sometime," way of thinking ? Or have we suddenly gone back to the days when a surgeon came in off the streets in his suit after milling about town, used suture needles plucked from his lapel and couldn't see the importance of any antiseptic measures ?

Why do doctors permit such things to go on ? How much is hidden from them by hospital administration ? What would happen if a doctor adamantly (sp) refused to do a surgical procedure in an operating room that had dust and flies floating in the air ? Likewise what would happen to any staff, nursing or otherwise who would refuse to work around conditions like that or became whistle blowers ?

Our researchers can't come up fast enough with new medicines now to combat the drug resistant strains of germs and other organisms that are rapidly showing up nowadays.

I once had a staph infection in my thumb joint, before, during and after each surgery (I had several) I was kept in a 'dirty' room. The nurse had to go through all sorts of a rigamarole before and after attending me so that staph wasn't spread through the hospital. Are those things still being done ?

In the spirit of economy and getting what you pay for (hospital administration pays for) in an inefficient and careless, cleaning staff and allowing the shortage of nursing and orderly staff, does the patient have an even break, a chance of maybe getting out of hospital in time to avoid being infected ? I wonder, is that the reason a new mother is sent home so soon after giving birth -- to avoid either her or the baby becoming infected with something that shouldn't be brought into contact with them in the first place ?

Behind the present day medical establishment is a long historical list of dedicated medical scientists, who were able to discern infectious practises, determine the organisms causing ills, and establish proper procedures for anything to do with medicine as a whole.

So, now our establishments are infested with staph as well as other infectious diseases, are we to go down fighting The Old Enemy ? . . . . . . . .

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