Are maternity wards clean??

[Spod]

Sorry - I hope this will be my last irrational fear.... but quite a few people/books are warning me to take my own antibacterial wipes into hospital because the bathrooms aren't that clean... I'm going in for a csection and dont relish the thought of cleaning their bathrooms for 4 days but......? I do have concerns about getting an infection while I'm in there. On last nights local news, there was a feature on my local hospital - apparently all the consultants have been sent an email telling them that the cleaning contract has been cancelled and they are now responsible for keeping their own areas clean and emptying their own bins..... this didnt help my fears.... what types of experience have you all had???

My room was spotless when i arrived but after I had DD I had a shower, a couple of hours later and made quite a mess in there if you know what I mean. i cleaned it up as best I could myself but it wasn't easy and needed to be done properly, it took a couple of days for it to be cleaned by anyone else!

I think that the consultants have to clean their offices only, it's not too much to ask of them surely.

The bathrooms have always been spotless when ever I've stayed in hospital. If you have a problem with the cleanliness then I'd tell a midwife / nurse about it and hand them the wipes, I don't think that cleaning is what you're there for.

I would take them in. And rubber flip flops as if you are on a ward the showers may not be very clean (they weren't at C&W). I had a room off the main ward, I dropped some bread & jam on the floor and the jammy mess was still there 4 days later (left it deliberately as I wanted to see if it got cleared up). I had to get my own sheets from the laundry room and change them myself. The bathroom attached to my room was pretty clean though.

They did have anti bac hand spray at the entrance to each ward so you could use that.

A friend of mine had a private room at C&W and her dh had to go out and find a mop and some flash and mop it himself cos it was filthy.

Jenie, now there's a good use of NHS resources. Get a consultant who is paid £80k a year to clean his/her own office instead of a cleaner who is paid £10k. It is PATHETIC! Do these NHS managers have any idea at all about costs?

So, if there are 100 consultants in a hospital and it takes them 15 mins each to clean their offices each day, that costs the hospital £250k per year assuming 220 working days in a year per consultant.

If you paid a cleaner it would cost £32k.

I didn't find it very clean TBH. The first time I went to the loo I was like Thomcat and made a bit of a mess. They had this shower attachment and I was trying to clean it all up and got told off by the midwife - apparently I'd flooded the toilet. Well it was better than leaving it a) how it was when I went in there and b) how I could have left it. I suppose its different if you're having a section but an anti-bacterial wipe wouldn't have gone that far for me.

dont be frightened spod,if you are aware of stuff you can deal with it.as a nurse i more or less knew what to expect,and i have to say it wasnt that clean.i took wipes and spray with me,and i know this sounds awful but i tried to wash as infrequently as poss-i had an emergancy c-sect,i was in for4 days and i only had 1 shower,i waited til i got home,i am the only person i personally know who had csect at this hospital who didnt get an infection in their wound-5 others did.so just be prepared and youll be fine.

filthy - my feet were black at the end of my labour.

Some hospitals are notoriously dirty, others are not, from what I gather.

My story is similar to Thomcat's and Bozza's. I lost not an insignificant amount of blood after the birth (tho I didn't hemmorhage) and felt dizzy & unwell when I stood. Though I explained this to the midwife, she must have thought I was exaggerating, and insisted I walk down the hall with her to the bathroom anyway. Then she left, and I nearly collapsed in the bathroom. I bled a little on the floor, but could barely stand, let alone bend down and clean up the blood and stand back up again. Unable to walk back down the hall to my bed, another midwife put me in a wheelchair. Apologetically, I mentioned to her the blood on the floor, and she nodded in understanding. But when I returned later that evening, the blood was still there.

I've heard other stories like that, unfortunately.

I was in for 4 days after an emergency c-section. Ward was absolutely fine, sheets changed regularly etc etc. But the shower rooms (I had 2 showers) were disgusting, as were the toilets.

It was mainly the floors and the un-emptied bins which were the worst. I think wards should insist that all sanitary wear and maternity knicks go in scented nappy sacks, not just the nappies themselves - eeeeeuuuuuurgh

I think Boots have the statistics for clean hospitals somewhere on their site, but I'm not sure.

Where are all these horrible hospitals? Our local maternity is spotless with every area being washed down with disinfectant in the mornings and all bins are changed twice daily, more if required. Cleaniliness was something I took for granted having both my boys and didn't worry about flip flops, wipes or anything.

My horrible hospital is also on another thread at the moment. Just make sure you're in labour

My local hospital is also spotless, I had a very good experience when I had ds. However a friend of mine who lives in a city just 30 miles away, had an awful experience. The hospital she gave birth in was filthy, especially the bathrooms. She said she had 1 shower whilst there but she actually felt dirtier when she came out!

Flip flops are a good idea. Until I had my now 5 mos baby I worked at The Royal Free and I thought they would rub it away because it was cleaned so much and the cleaning was very carefully supervised. I never saw a consultant having to clean his own office and just can't belive that ever happens, they are gods after all I had my baby in UCH which was dirty, even by my very "pro-NHS, don't complain its not a hotel" standards. The only excuse is that it is being rebuilt round the corner so maybe they've given up on the old one?

Yes I second the flip flops idea. I took my slippers (and a cream coloured dressing gown...) but as soon as I got out of bed, flooded all over them so DH had to take them home and wash them and I was left bare foot. I will go rubber flip-flops if there is a next time.

Wasn't clean in my experience. I took the antibacterial wipes but in the end couldn't be bothered using them. Definitely take flip flops - not slippers, you'll bleed on them (sorry!)

In short, no. Hospitals are not clean places in general, even if they look it. When I was a nurse (and this is going back a few years now) our cleaners used to take real pride in their work (this was in the days before contract cleaning companies, when each ward had permanent allocated cleaners) but it was an old hospital and always looked like s*e no matter what they did. I'm more concerned that the nurses/midwives/doctors wash their hands between patients and don't wear loads of rings or a wristwatch which can harbour bacteria underneath. You only have to look at the rising incidence of hospital-acquired infections to realise that cleanliness is not a high enough priority.

The thing that used to concern me in hospitals was visitors letting their small babies/toddlers sit on the floor, play under the beds etc. I'm all for kids coming into contact with plenty of bugs, but I dread to think what some of them may have found to play with.

I was in chelsea nd westminster twice - filthy. Rooms and ESPECIALLY bathrooms. there was blood on the floor of the loo that was there for the entire 3 days I was there, and the bath was grey with multiple rings of dirt around it. Cleaners came once a day and desultorily wiped a filthy mop around maybe a third of the wards. bins only emptied when they were overflowing.
There is no way on earth I would have had a bath there, and no way on earth I would have taken my flipflops off for anything - even IN the shower!

Sorry, hope it is better in other places.

Mine was filthy. I had a section and several times bled all over the floor (don't ask) and dh had to wipe it up with some paper towels. The midwife also spilt a mix of blood and urine from the catheter (which no one had emptied and was practically overflowing) onto the floor and didn't wipe it up. The showers leaked everywhere and when I had ds1 were covered in blood. When I had ds2 the midwife told me not to use the bath as it was too dirty (i didn't even look). I escaped infection but ds2 didn't.

King's in london, a three star trust hospital, is FILTHY. I was on the post-natal ward for a week, and then back with ds for surgery on the children's ward a year later. In the post-natal bathroom, a blood soaked towel was left for 4 days. I made my entrance to the hospital and labour ward kneeling up facing backwards in a wheelchair, looking at the floor. All the way down the corridors, I kept seeing silverfish and cockroaches. I nearly demanded to be taken straight back out, even tho I'd been pushing for hours....We had our own room on the children's ward, but there was still litter, clinical as well as crisp packets, under the cot from the previous occupants.
Shower, don't bath, and if you can't stand well enough to shower, ask dp to bring a little plastic stool in to sit on. Take your own glass and water jug. (I took my own cafitiere...)Take a bath cleaning sponge for bathroom and the washbasin in your room and, personally, I wouldn't eat a mouthful of hospital food ...get visitors to bring you tempting meals. OR ask to be shown round in advance and pay particular attention to cleanliness so you know what to prepare for. Have you seen your hospital's post natal ward's? I must admit that all the medical care and attention we have received has been fantastic. Just imagine you're going camping for a few days...
Good Luck.

pph sounds like you were there at the same time as me! I didn't take my flippys off either!

I had an elective cs and was in for five days in the Rosie (Sara Ward). I was woken up each morning by the assistants cleaning the bay I was in. The showers and loos were spotless. I didn't try the baths. When I was back in with gallstones three weeks later (Lady Mary ward) I had a private room - also spotless. The final stop on my tour of local maternity wards was Hinchingbrooke - the ward and toilets were spotless, but the shower room wasn't. I feel very lucky now, as I didn't even think about wipes. Do take tissues though. V. handy for wiping up that first baby posset

I was very lucky as the Hospital in which I gave birth to my DD in early August had only been open since late March, so the fixtures and fittings were still pristine. I was also lucky as I was able to come out of hospital with DD on the same day as I'd given birth (1st baby, 3hr natural labour with no pain releif or probs).

The shower was a stupid nightmare though as it had a curtain and no shower tray, kind of like a wet-room style shower, but there were signs all over the bathroom asking that you pull the curtain to avoid flooding the room. This would have been great but the curtain was pointless as the water just ran out underneath the curtain as their was now 'rim' to keep it contained. I spent more time trying to mop up the floor with the paper towels than I did in the shower. Every time I mopped it up I'd just make more mess with blood ! Very poor design if you ask me.

sambo - i agree about the consultants cleaning their own areas - given the difficulty i have had getting any time to talk to my consultant i would rather the hospital sack a middle manager, renew the cleaning contract and let the consultants get on with patient care. Its not about whether or not consultants think they are god or are handy with a mop - cleaning is not their job. and the point is that if the hospital think its acceptable to cut down on basic hygeine, what else do they think they can cut out?
Thanks for the tips re flip flops... I will take in wipes etc... and frankly will also avoid going too near the showers. I'm bloddy staggered that things are so unclean in such an environment. Whats the shortest time possible to spend in hospital after a csection? I had major (seriously major) spinal surgery and was out on day 4.... i dont wanna be in for long. I dont have panics about the birth.... just about the standard of cleanliness!!!

the maternity ward in Barnet hospital where i had my daughter 2 years ago was great, very clean as I recall. Horrid food though !

Sorry typo city ! Should be 'relief' and 'no rim'