Some Alberta Health Care workers are voicing their concerns over safety at their work place. AHS officials admitted proper protocol wasn’t followed at Edmonton’s Royal Alexandra hospital, and now a couple health care workers in Mayerthorpe are saying it also wasn’t followed there.
On Friday, health officials said a patient who had been treated at the Royal Alex for an infection after undergoing surgery in India, ended up testing positive for a bacteria that’s resistant to multiple antiboitics. Later, six more patients tested positive, and one has since died, prompting more than 400 screens of individual patients to be conducted. But the problem lies with the initial patient not being isolated – as per the policy of quarantining people who come into the hospital with problems after having been hospitalized elsewhere.
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Now, there are also concerns about not enough being done at an extended care home and hospital in Mayerthorpe, where a patient who tested positive for the bacteria at the Royal Alex was also treated. Two employees at the Mayerthorpe facility, who do not wish to be identified, tell Global News the patient was also not isolated there, and they believe staff have not been properly trained to deal with the bacteria.
One of the workers says the patient was put into a double room with another resident of that facility. “And, at the time, we did have a single room for that person to go into.”
The two health care workers are concerned for their safety as well as the safety of others who have been inside of the two facilities.
However, according to Dr. Mark Joffe, AHS Senior Medical Director, the bacteria is not anymore likely to spread than other bacteria staff come across regularly.
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“The bacteria don’t jump, they don’t fly, they’re transmitted mostly on hands,” says Dr. Joffe. He adds that some of the patients who tested positive for the bacteria at the Royal Alex have gone home. He explains that while they have the bacteria, they’re not sick with it, and the risk to others is extremely small.
But after the incident at the Royal Alex, the health care workers in Mayerthorpe believe more should be done.
“There needs to be a policy and procedure and that has to be set in place….inform staff on the precautions and take the proper precautions from the very instant that it was known this diseased had come in.”
With files from Slav Kornik, Global News
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