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We aim to keep our surgery clean and tidy and offer a safe environment to our patients and staff. We are proud of our modern, purpose built Practice and endeavour to keep it clean and well maintained at all times.
If you have any concerns about cleanliness or infection control, please report these to our Reception staff.
Our GPs and nursing staff follow our Infection Control Policy to ensure the care we deliver and the equipment we use is safe.
We take additional measures to ensure we maintain the highest standards:
Any infection can be caught or spread where there are ill people together, this can be in a hospital, a care home a GP surgery or in a public place. The information below explains how you can help the staff to reduce infection and provide a clean and safe environment in which you receive treatment and/ or care. By following the points in this advice, you can help us to prevent vulnerable individuals from picking up an infection and prevent the spread of infections. If people pick up an infection, it can cause discomfort, pain and anxiety.
You need a germ. The germ lives in or on its host, another person, an animal, or a contaminated surface (door handle, worktop, equipment).
The germ is passed on by either direct or indirect contact, this can be coughing, sneezing, hand contact with someone who carries the germ on their hand, or by touching a contaminated surface.
If the germ then enters your system and you are not immune to it you can catch the infection. Generally, healthy people are less likely to catch infections, as their immune system should protect them well. But if for any reason your immune system is weaker than normal, you will be more vulnerable and therefore need to protect yourself even more against any infection.
Hand Hygiene:
Personal Hygiene
This is an infection that may affect people when they are receiving healthcare. People may catch these infections in hospitals, care homes, doctors’ surgeries, health centres and even at home if they are being cared for there.
There are lots of reasons why someone can develop an HCAI. Being ill or receiving treatment can make your natural defence system (immune system) weaker than usual. Most people won’t pick up an HCAI while they are being treated but it is impossible to completely remove all the risk during healthcare. This is because every disease, condition or procedure and sometimes medication can reduce your natural defences against infection.
The most common types of HCAI in hospitals are urine infections, wound infections, skin infections, chest infections & sickness and diarrhoea.
Some are caused by germs that live normally on our bodies and usually do us no harm such as Staphylococcus aureus, which many people can carry harmlessly in their nose. The most well known are ‘MRSA’, ‘C-diff’ and ‘Norovirus’ MRSA is short for Meticillin Resistant Staphylococcus aureus. This bacteria can cause an infection if it gets into a wound, the bloodstream, bladder or lungs. C-diff is short for Clostridium difficile a bacteria that some people have to live naturally in their bowel. For some people, unfortunately, this can develop into diarrhoea and fever (usually after certain kinds of antibiotics). Norovirus causes sickness and diarrhoea. This may last for a couple of days and usually has no lasting effects. This virus is often reported as causing outbreaks of infection in hospitals and care homes. There are also information leaflets available on:
Preventing and controlling HCAI is a national priority and all care settings are working hard to prevent the spread of infection in the NHS and care homes.
This includes:
HCAI are monitored and reported to Public Health England, for learning and improvement purposes.
Your infection could require treatment, which probably can be given to you at home. You may be asked to stay at home for the duration of the treatment and not visit the GP surgery, they may arrange a home visit instead. If you don’t understand your condition and/or treatment please ask a member of staff.