Doctors and Nurses Don’t Understand Infections

December 16, 2024 by Doctor Vernon Coleman

The NHS is warning that norovirus infections are spreading again. I’m not surprised. This is what I said about infections in my book `Why and how doctors kill more people than cancer’:

Extract from `Why and how doctors kill more people than cancer’:

`Having talked to many doctors and nurses I am convinced that most don't know the basic principles of how diseases are spread - and how they can be controlled. An unhealthy majority, for example, seemed unaware that there is an important difference between an `infectious' disease (spread through the environment - including by air) and a `contagious' disease (spread by contact). I quizzed a dozen doctors and nurses in one large NHS hospital, including several who had specific responsibilities for controlling the spread of infections such as MRSA and C.difficile and none of them seemed to understand the basic principles of disease spread. Quite senior NHS personnel have tried to convince me that gastrointestinal infections are transmitted through the air and that this, not poor hygiene practises, explains why such bugs tend to sweep through hospital patients. When I produced evidence showing that they were wrong (although it is possible for bugs to be transmitted via an aerosol route the vast majority of infections are spread by poor hygiene) two members of NHS staff then tried to argue, apparently quite seriously, that bugs behaved differently in hospitals to the way they behaved elsewhere. One doctor insisted that bugs which are spread only by touch outside hospitals can be airborne inside hospitals. It is, perhaps, hardly surprising that staff don't bother to wash their hands and don't understand the importance of obeying the simplest rules about hygiene. And it is hardly surprising that the number of people dying from infections is rising dramatically. If you don't know how a disease is contracted you aren't likely to have much success in preventing its spread. Many doctors and nurses don't even seem to realise that common causes of vomiting, such as the norovirus, are spread largely through inadequate cleaning of contaminated wards.’

NOTE
The above is taken from `Why and how doctors kill more people than cancer’ by Vernon Coleman which can be purchased from the bookshop on www.vernoncoleman.com
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Copyright Vernon Coleman December 2024