Things to do with your Infection Control Policy

Arsington arse, it never bloody stops. Major infection control crisis in the department. Just because a couple of patients got that C. Whiff virus or whatever it is, now there’s all hell to pay. Typical - anything goes wrong, blame the surgeon.

Turns out that on one of the forms that the managers have to fill in and send to the DoH, there’s a box to tick. And that box is labelled: “Didn’t kill all the patients with C. Niff”. And the managers want to tick the box, because that way they get money. Or something.

So, they’ve appointed some bossy over-promoted nurse as the new Infection Control Coordinator, who looks like that old bint with the ridiculous hair from How Clean Is Your House, only several orders of magnitude more stupid and bossy.

Why will they never learn? Making appointments like this is so counterproductive. If they had any sense they’d appoint some fit-looking piece of totty for once, and they’d find that compliance with the new regime would be much higher. Look at my new anaesthetist Gabrielle - I do everything she tells me to immediately, if not sooner.

Anyway, she’s bringing in a whole load of stupid new rules - wash your hands blah blah, don’t pick your nose when scrubbed blah blah, usual rubbish. What they don’t take into account is the negative effect of all these things. They’re a single issue pressure group - they only care about infection rates, and so long as they fall, they couldn’t give a monkeys about whatever else happens.

Whereas doctors like me have to consider all the possible consequences for our patients. It’s like that stupid 20mph speed limit they’ve put on the main road by the hospital, near the school for the blind and the pensioner’s day centre. You know the one, opposite the Cute Kittens That Might Stray on to the Main Road Refuge. I mean, sure it’s going to save a few lives, but hundreds of us are going to be late! 

So, the next thing I know, I get a call from her. She’s called Dawn, and she has a voice like fingernails on a blackboard, only not as pleasant. She has “things to discuss”. And do you know what it was? Smoking.

That’s right, she wants to talk to me about smoking. Since when did infection control have anything to do with arsing smoking, for arse’s sake (apart from the fact that they’re both subject to interfering fascist puritan fuckwits)? She says she’s “not comfortable” with my practice of nipping out for a fag during my operating list. 

Well, as you can imagine, I lamented her lack of comfort, but asked her to consider what would happen if I shoved her infection control policy up her arse sideways, and how comfortable she would be then.

And anyway, if it wasn’t for the anti-smoking fascists, we could smoke on hospital property, and I wouldn’t have to nip out, go all the way to the edge of the hospital grounds, hop over the fence to the Manure Farm and Slurry Processing Plant next door, just so I can get a bit of nicotine, whilst in the midst of a list of life-saving surgical procedures.

Jeez! She’ll be making me de-scrub next.

Tags: HAI, Humour