The trust is celebrating after achieving two years without a single case of hospital-acquired MRSA bacteraemia infection at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead - making us one of the top performing hospitals in London. This success is down to the trust’s zero tolerance approach to healthcare associated infections. 

When the Department of Health began measuring targets for MRSA bacteraemia almost 10 years ago, we were very nearly the worst performing hospital in England. Since then, the trust has made infection prevention and control a priority for quality of care. The hospital is now consistently one of the best hospitals in London for low, or zero infection rates. 

Every fortnight a group of clinical, nursing and operational staff meet to work through the trust infection prevention and control activities and investigate all infection incidents to learn from any mistakes. In 2009, the infection prevention and control team won the Nursing Times infection prevention and control award for demonstrating improvements. It cited our focus on infection prevention and control staff roles and introducing practice educators who work in uniform at the bed side demonstrating best practice. This improvement is a reflection of the hard work of staff and their dedication to providing safe care to our patients. 

Professor Stephen Powis, medical director, said; “Infection control is our top priority and our stringent cleaning, hygiene and hand washing practices, together with initiatives to improve invasive device care, aseptic practices and developing a culture of challenging poor practice in all clinical areas, have resulted in our infection rates remaining low.”

“Two years without a single case of hospital-acquired MRSA bacteraemia is an outstanding achievement and great news for our patients and visitors. However we are not complacent and are continually looking to see what we can do further to retain this level of success.”