Mary Graham

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Jackie Stewart falls silent as she scrutinises the C-diff isolation ward at Maidstone Hospital.

The ward has 12 well-spaced beds, special curtains which can be cleaned easily and staff put on aprons and gloves every time they enter.

It is where Mrs Stewart’s mother, Mary Hirst, should have been taken after contracting the superbug. But in 2006 there was no isolation ward.

Instead, Mrs Hirst, 83, of Cross Keys, Bearsted, fought off the infection while she recovered from a broken hip in Mercer Ward.

After being moved to another two wards she contracted C-diff again and MRSA. She died on May 26 after six weeks in hospital.

Mrs Stewart, of Plantation Lane, Bearsted, said: “The things that stick in the mind are the absolute awful smell of diarrhoea everywhere, the filth and the utter chaos in the hospital. Her bed was messy and I once found faeces under her fingernails.”

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust’s director of infection prevention and control, Dr Sara Mumford, who is showing us around said: “As long as I am drawing breath it cannot happen again.

“We know through all of this there were tragic deaths.

“You cannot stop individual cases from happening. Now as soon as a patient comes in with diarrhoea they are put in a side room.

“As soon as C-diff is confirmed the patient is taken straight to the isolation ward and usually they will stay there until they are ready to go home.”

After Mrs Hirst died her family complained about the way the outbreaks had been handled and Mrs Stewart was told to sit down and be quiet at a board meeting when she tried to question former chief executive Rose Gibb.

The family gave evidence to the Healthcare Commission.

“If someone had listened it might not have happened,” she said. “I had no idea when I sat with my mother in the ambulance after her fall that I would end up challenging hospital chief executives, dealing with the media and suing the trust.”

Dr Mumford, a consultant microbiologist, joined the trust in November from the Kent Health Protection Unit. She gave advice to the trust after the Healthcare Commission’s report was published.

Today she is showing us around the isolation ward and labs where tests for suspected superbugs are carried out.

Dr Mumford said: “When I arrived the hospital was paralysed. If someone had diarrhoea whole wards were being closed and everyone was panic-stricken.

“One of the first things we did was devise a risk assessment, just 10 boxes, looking at whether that patient had laxatives, vomiting, diarrhoea, antibiotics, which turned into a care pathway, showing how we would treat people with C-diff.

“Two and a half years ago, C-diff tests were done twice a week, now they are done twice a day. Everything is up front.”

The C-diff isolation ward has already been moved from the 20-bed Cornwallis Ward to the smaller Whitehead ward. Patients from the Kent and Sussex and Pembury hospitals with the infection come to Maidstone.

Dr Mumford says the infection ward will move to a smaller one as it is never full.

On the day of our tour there are four people in the ward. Beds not being used are stripped of mattresses and covers so nothing can spread contamination.

Hand washing is something Mrs Stewart wants more information about as alcohol gel alone does not kill C-diff spores.

“On general wards you do not expect patients to have C-diff, so the rule is to gel before seeing them,” added Dr Mumford.

“As soon as a patient has diarrhoea staff should still gel beforehand and wash as soon as they have seen them.

“Preventing the spread of infection is something that is everyone’s responsibility. It really is a different organisation now than it was then.”

After the official tour is over Mrs Stewart poignantly decides to re-trace her mother’s journey through Maidstone Hospital and pauses outside Whatman and Jonathan Saunders wards.

The first change she notices is instructions on using hand gel and posters showing how many people on the ward that year had been diagnosed with C-diff.

Whatman ward had six C-diff patients and three with MRSA between September, 2007 and August 2008. Jonathan Saunders had 10 in the same period.

“There were never any instructions how to use the gel back then and it was never at the hospital entrance,” she said.

“The hospital does look and feel cleaner and Dr Mumford seems very on top of things.

“I just hope now they are listening and the media attention does keep them focused. There is human tragedy behind everything we have seen today.”