Doctors Still not Heeding Ignaz Semelweis

This opinion article, published on April 19, 2010 by the New York Times, discusses the high rates of hospital-acquired infections. The article can be found here: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/04/19/is-this-the-answer-to-hospital-acquired-infections/?scp=2&sq=mrsa&st=cse. The author is Stephen Dubner, who also co-wrote the popular book Freakonomics.

Stephen says, “Well, after taking at look at the latest National Healthcare Quality Report, I think I won’t be shutting up any time soon [about hospital sanitation failures]. Despite a lot of effort and innovation, despite a wise checklist approach, the [rate of infection] doesn’t seem to be getting better.” He then goes on to tell us about the irresponsibility of many doctors when it comes to keeping their patients safe from infection.

Stephen Dubner says that although medical techniques are constantly being innovated and improved, infections acquired in a medical setting, particularly for surgery patients, are still shockingly prevalent. It is horrifying to see the figures of how many people die in the hospital, not due to the condition they entered with, but due to an unrelated infection. We like to think that our hospitals are sanitary and safe; a place where people go to heal. Instead people are dying of similar infections to those they could have gotten in a hospital of centuries ago.

Many of these infections could be avoided by simply using proper hand-washing technique. Thousands of people a year die unnecessarily due to infectious diseases, including pneumonia and staph infections, which are present in hospitals. When doctors perform surgery or examinations without correctly sanitizing their hands, or when hospital facilities are not as clean as they could be, people become infected with potentially fatal diseases. In class we learned about the doctor Ignaz Semelweis, who campaigned for sanitation in medical settings, but doctors are still not quite following his advice.

It seems as if Dubner does not really know what he’s talking about when he says that bacteria should be tagged so that a patient’s infection can be traced back to the doctor. Although this does not seem possible, I agree that doctor’s need to be held more responsible for their roles in giving infections to their patients. Hospitals need to be more rigorous about enforcing sanitation standards, and perhaps a medical group such as WHO or the Red Cross should raise international awareness about how easy it would be to lower hospital infection rates, just as Ignaz Semelweis proved with his patients.