Health bosses look to clean up hospital laundry dangers

Published on Monday 1 August 2011 12:05

AN NHS crackdown has been launched on staff leaving dangerous items like used needles in laundry piles, including using a metal detector on bags of dirty sheets.

The problem has been getting worse, with hospital laundry workers having to deal with rogue materials every couple of days hidden beneath towels and bed sheets.

In the last two months there have been 44 "dangerous" items discovered, including a urine bag, blood samples and even a foot-long needle.

NHS Lothian vice-chairman Eddie Egan said: "We need to do more work on this. We have situations where patients waiting for blood samples to be tested can't get the results because the case has been boiled and the label's come off."

The issue of "sharps" arriving in the laundry room has long been a problem, but health chiefs are hopeful their latest measures can end it for good.

Every nurse in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, Western General and St John's Hospital in Livingston has been sent a letter about the issue.

Each bag sent to the laundry rooms will have a warning label attached, urging those packing it to be careful.

Charge nurses will each be given a safety DVD called It All Comes Out in the Wash, which warns of associated dangers.

When that was first broadcast it led to a 30 per cent reduction in dangerous goods being found locally, but standards have since slipped back.

Hospital bosses have also bought a second metal detector to aid the situation.

Fiona Cameron, NHS Lothian's head of infection prevention and control, said management had acted to reduce the chances of similar incidents happening again.

She said: "Following each incident a senior member of staff from the area identified visited the laundry, removed the item, made the area safe and met with the laundry staff.

"This action and subsequent initiatives have had a positive impact in reducing the number of rogue items and increasing staff morale."

Sources said the laundry department was often the first place people looked for things which have gone missing, such is the frequency with which they are wrongly sent there.

Last October, the News revealed how a PC had ended up in the laundry room at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Morningside, having been sent there from a different building.

Letters reveal Sick Kids funding crisis was foreseen in 2009

HEALTH chiefs feared that the new Sick Kids hospital would run into funding difficulties as far back as December 2009, it has emerged.

In letters between NHS Lothian and the Scottish Government, obtained by the Evening News through Freedom of Information, the possibility of alternative funding models were discussed from an early stage.

The health board's director of finance Susan Goldsmith even suggested in an e-mail on December 1, 2009, to her counterpart at Holyrood, John Matheson, that controversial PFI partner Consort could be brought in to help fund the 250 million project.

The Evening News revealed yesterday that the future of the new hospital is in doubt, due to a land wrangle between NHS Lothian and Consort, which owns the land.