RCN praises health care staff as infections continue to fall

Published: 18 June 2009

The Royal College of Nursing says the hard work and innovation of health care staff in tackling infections such as MRSA and C.difficile has helped significantly reduce infection rates.

The comments come as the Health Protection Agency (HPA) published figures on health care associated infections which show that infection rates between January and March 2009 are significantly lower than they were in the same quarter of last year. However, they are slightly higher than those of the previous quarter.

RCN Chief Executive & General Secretary, Dr Peter Carter says:

"The leadership and innovation of nurses has been central to driving down infection rates, and improving the quality of care for all patients. However, these figures do show that while the general trend is a reduction in infections, the increase last winter demonstrates that challenges remain. Everybody working in the health service needs to fully understand why this occurs if we are to continue to make progress".

The RCN says that more information needs to be made available to explain why some problems are persisting in spite of all the hard work put in by health care staff and is calling for staff to be given the necessary training, authority and resources to ensure that infection rates continue to fall.