to be upset that Leslie Ash has been awarded £500,000 compensation

[nametaken]

for catching MRSA in hospital, when my mother was awarded £8,000 for a botched cataract operation.

maximummy, if you take that stance then Leslie Ash should be "blamed" for having rough sex with her husband in the first place (the reason she was admitted to hospital)

well i didn't know about the rough sex but still she didn't expect to get a super bug on admission to hospital so deserves comp

i don't think the soldier expected to get his legs blown off

it wasn't £500,000.

it was £5m.

from Chelsea and Westminter NHS trust.

even less money now to keep hospitals clean and fund treatments for people.

she's 'delighted' with the money.

i'll bet.

£5 million?!!!! OMFG. Has anyone else been awarded this kind of money?

I know she didn't expect to get MRSA but you don't expect your hubby to break your ribs either.

Take your money and run leslie. run run run.

The money would have come out of their insurance, not the hospital bed fund.

I know lots of people who have been awarded millions in compensation(fingers crossed I will have one living in my house one day)
I am glad for her(althoughthat it has happened so quickly) if she needs carers and equipment they both cost a fortune.

She did not contract MRSA she contracted MSSA. She probably had the pathogen on her skin when she came in, and because she was given an epidural it got into her body where it can really do harm.

As for sailors, airmen and soldiers who are injured expecting to get injured in combat, that is true, but they also expect to be decently treated when they are injured. This does not happen at the present time. Those guys go out there and give their all, and then return injured and are treated with the utmost contempt by most of the inhabitants of this country. Just look what happened to the guys in the swimming pool a few weeks ago when they jeered at for swimming. Maybe some of the 5m awarded to LA should have been spent to build a nice swimming pool at Headley Court (rehab centre for soldiers, airmen and sailors).

I wonder why people aren't routinely swabbed for MRSA/MSSA when they're admitted to hospital whether that be a planned admission or emergency, along with the usual bloods/urine/bp. Surely it would save ££££ in the long run. 'd rather know I was a carrier and have the appropriate preventative treatment than be a modern day Typhoid Mary.

One would hope that hospital staff are swabbed as well but I bet they're not .

patients are routinely swabbed when coming into hospital, but MSSA isn't unusual, and would not raise an eyebrow if it was found. MRSA is a different matter, and patients with it are isolated (single room) till clear. Unfortunately, no hospital I have ever worked in has enough single rooms available for all patients admitted, so patients aren't isolated until the bug is identified, which can take a couple of days.

The NHS will not swab staff as they would have too many of them found to be positive. They would have to pay them sick leave, treat them and also pay for staff to replace them.

If I was going for elective surgery, I would ask to be swabbed for MRSA during my POAC.

Years ago, if a patient was found to be MRSA, all staff on the ward would be swabbed. Not so now.

tissy even people with confirmed MRSA are not always isolated as there is not the space to allow this. Similarly with other infections.

Most people carry MRSA (particularly staff) so they arent swabbed, bet ive got it somewhere on my personage

My father caught MRSA or was it MSSA?? Not sure now, but anyway he did after going into hospital last year, didn't know you could sue!! After the hell it put the whole family through and also it has left my father a completely different person i am now wondering whether he should put in a claim..

Oh, I see now it's £5 million, not half a mil.

you can ask to be screened for MRSA before elective surgery. many people in the community are carriers, indeed it's thought to be the commonest way that hospital infections are spread (through visitors/staff/patients themselves) rather than some cesspit in the hospital.