Flexible rules

A friend of mine sometime ago said to me that Dan’s website was starting to become a “war on the NHS” and at that time it did start to feel like it. When I first setup dan’s site it was all about how Dan was doing but it was also about “living the dream”, to help people who were about to enter the same situation know what sort of things they should expect “warts and everything”. There are some times when things are really going great and you could not ask for more then there are times where there leaves a lot to be desired. At present we are having a number of problems with regard to Dan which has meant like all parents we are having to fight for whats best for our child, my hope is in doing this it does not come across as another war. That said heres todays update……….

Today we decided that we would take the other kids out for the day as Kyle & Brid’s go back to their mum’s on Friday and because of work and hospital commitments we have not really had chance to do much with them all. So off we went for the day down to Twinlakes with their Grandad. Needless to say they all had a great day playing on slides, roller coasters, pirate ships you name it they done it. Dan’s also had a good day however we ran into more problems shortly after arriving at the hospital this evening. When Dan was first diagnosed with colonised MRSA he was immediately “quarentined” into a sideroom and was given his own nurse to avoid cross-infection. It was only a matter of days however before his nurse was being shared because of staff shortages on the unit. Soon after that he was moved back out onto the main unit despite still having MRSA and was put at the bottom of the unit behind the magic curtain. At this time infection control said that both Dan and the patient opposite to him were to be nursed individually and were not to share a nurse. However, once again the rules have been flaunted as tonight he is sharing a nurse. When we found out about this and in light of being told that infection control cannot be ignored we were suitably upset. Now a couple of days ago Daniel tested negative for MRSA which means that he could be clear of the MRSA but yet he is being nursed tonight with a patient that probably does have it which in my opinion is just reckless behaviour. So much so that Julie requested that the ward Matron be contacted so that she could speak to them. Julie was told by the matron that microbiology had said that Daniel no longer needed to be nursed separetely and despite Julie’s continuing objections she was simply being told that there just wasn’t nursing staff available. However, this was also not quite true as one of the staff from the unit had been sent out to work on the wards as “they” were short staffed. In the end she gave up discussing it as it became clear that while our primary concern was our child’s safety this is not being reflected elsewhere.