The week we're highlighting how following our infection prevention guidelines could have helped keep patients safe from Clostridium difficile (C-diff). 

A patient was admitted with abdominal pain and diarrhoea and placed into a four bedded bay.  It was four days before a stool sample was taken with a postive result of C-diff.

As soon as the positive result was known the patient was isolated - though we know that during this time our enhanced infection prevention and control (IPC) precautions and policy had not been followed. 

The result was that we may have helped it to spread  to another patient on the same bay, who a week later developed diarrhoea. A stool sample was taken and it was C-diff. Again this patient wasn’t isolated promptly.  

All our infection control policies are in the new polices and documents library - search in the categories field for policies/infection control to get the full list.

If you have any questions on infection control or want to talk to the team please call HRI 5258 or email IPCT@cht.nhs.uk