60% of NHS Trusts in England using MRSA online training course to combat doubling of MRSA-related deaths in four years
The Training Foundation today announced that 312 NHS Trusts in England have now licensed access to its online training portal www.mrsa.no.com to provide staff with the motivational “MRSA – you can make a difference” training programme. Only this week, more than 30 NHS Trusts have joined the initiative. This announcement coincides with today’s report from the Office for National Statistics revealing that MRSA-related deaths continued to increase in 2003 in England and Wales and have now officially doubled in four years.
Nick Mitchell, Chief Executive of The Training Foundation said, “Patients that die with MRSA are often already very ill and their existing illness, rather than MRSA, is often designated as the underlying cause of death. This has tended to significantly understate the scale of the problem. The true number of MRSA-related deaths is undoubtedly much higher than those where death certificates mention MRSA, and it is therefore doubly worrying that even those cases have themselves doubled in just four years.”
‘The complete absence of any co-ordinated national training programme to combat the spread of healthcare associated infection such as MRSA has, in our view, been disastrous. We are very pleased that more than 60% of all NHS personnel can now benefit from our training programme, however, that still leaves staff in nearly 300 NHS Trusts who can not. We strongly encourage all Chief Executives in these Trusts to ensure their Trust’s participation in this inexpensive programme. It is much cheaper for the NHS to put a barrier at the top of the cliff, by effective staff training, than to keep on sending ambulances to the bottom after a serious event has occurred. According to the National Audit Office, treating MRSA is now costing the NHS more than £1b a year.”
NHS organisations licencing the courses span the full range of Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), Acute Trusts, Ambulance Trusts, Care Trusts, and Mental Health Trusts across England. Additionally NHS Professionals, the not-for-profit, in-house flexible staffing service run by the NHS for the NHS has also entered into a national licence.
NHS staff and contractors are able to access their personal online infection control course via The Training Foundation learning portal, www.mrsa.no.com , 24 hours a day, 365 days per year.
Mitchell continued “It is especially encouraging to see that Primary Care Trusts and those involved with community care services have embraced the initiative so wholeheartedly. 179 of the Trusts that have licenced access to the programme operate in the Primary and Community Care sector.”
“Our infection control awareness programme for the community care environment is clearly essential because MRSA does not stop at the hospital gates and is already a major concern for care homes."
Len Cook the National Statistician recently revealed that in 2001 and 2002, MRSA contributed to the death of 53 patients in Care Homes each year.