Specialist ‘had to ask’ other experts about hospital-acquired infections – Irvine Times

Gaynor Evans, clinical lead for infection prevention and control with NHS Improvement North of England from 2013 to 2016, admitted she even had trouble pronouncing one of the infections found at Queen Elizabeth University Hospital (QEUH) in Glasgow when she was assigned to review the case notes.

She gave evidence on Tuesday to the Scottish Hospitals Inquiry, which began in 2020 after two infection-related deaths and is looking into the construction of the QEUH campus.

Ms Evans, who told the inquest her career in infection prevention began in 1997, was asked to review 85 cases involving children who became ill after being admitted to hospital wards .

Senior counsel for the inquiry Fred McIntosh KC referred to previous discussions at earlier hearings about the concept of “unusual micro-organisms” found at QEUH and asked Ms Evans what was to be understood about it.

She replied: “All I can tell you is that some of these infections I have not seen in my career.”

Asked about background levels of infection, Ms Evans said continuous efforts should always be made to reduce background levels.

“We shouldn’t be complacent and just assume that’s the base rate,” she said. “You should aim to reduce the background infection, not assume it’s the norm.”

Asked how this would apply to the type of ‘micro-organisms’ found at QEUH, Ms Evans said: ‘Some of them I had to ask because I had never come across them before.

“If you get a new organism – that should signal. Where did that come from? Have we seen it before? When was the last time we saw this?

“I think there are some infections that have only had five in the whole year before in the whole of Scotland, yet we’ve had three infections from the same organism in a very short space of time.”

Mr McIntosh asked Ms Evans to look at a list of some of the ‘micro-organisms’ found at QEUH.

She told the inquest there were at least four she had not met before.

Showing a second table with more names, Ms Evans said there were four more she hadn’t seen before.

She added: “If you find something and think, ‘I don’t even know how to pronounce that,’ that’s really unusual.”

The inquest, before Lord Brodie in Edinburgh, continues.