An excellent piece by London GP Iona Heath: Do not sit on the bed in this weeks BMJ.
Hospitals are forbidding doctors from sitting on the bed, in the name of infection control. But no link has been made between sitting on the bed and increased rates of infection and as Dr Heath concludes:
“can we not campaign for home within hospital and encourage flowers and sitting on the bed and every other informality, unless there is robust evidence to deter us? ‘Do not sit on the bed’ and ‘No flowers’ are injunctions that are all too similar to ‘Do not walk on the grass’ and ‘No ball games’ rules that mostly diminish the joys of life rather than enhance them, and such rules, unless absolutely necessary, have no place in hospitals, where joy is too often in short supply.”
Having seen many ward rounds conducted from a standing position at the end of the bed, I have to agree.
Margaret McCartney
Clive Cookson
Andrew Jack