Hi-De-Hi Doctors

How often do you wash your hands? Several times every day, I should imagine. Let's assume that you wash them just three times every day. That's 21 times a week, 90 times in a 30-day month and 1095 times every year. By the time you reach the age of 25, that's 27,375 hand washes - ok, I know, kids aren't so good at washing their hands. So, for the sake of argument, lets forget the first 5 years - by the age of 25, at three washes a day with none at all in the first 5 years, that's 21,900 hand washes.

Now, you could be forgiven for thinking that, after 21,900 attempts, even the most intellectually challenged hand washers might have mastered the technique. Certainly, you might imagine that highly trained medical staff, to whom we are happy to entrust our lives, would be fully alongside the basic idea of washing their hands.

Sadly, in Worcester at least, this doesn't appear to be the case. According to this mind boggling article from Channel 4 News, Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust wants to combat hospital infections by installing loudspeakers to play messages reminding staff to wash their hands.

When staff members wash their hands, a pre-recorded message will play, which will remind them what to do.

Eh? You mean they don't already know?? I fully appreciate that doctors and nurses like to think they're very busy people, and, of course, they can't be expected to remember everything. But if they really can't recall how to wash their hands then something is very, very wrong.

Surely, they will have been told of the importance of hygiene at medical school? Have they really managed to go through years of training, and then on to employment in the NHS, without knowing how to wash their hands? If so, wouldn't you think these allegedly intelligent people would have had sufficient initiative to go and find out? No wonder MRSA and other hospital acquired infections are rife in our hospitals!

Indeed, the situation is apparently so grave that these motion-detecting speakers are being paid for out of Government funding set up to combat hospital acquired infections. I wonder if the budget will stretch to include hiring Ruth Madock to record the messages:

" Hi de Hi Doctors!
It's time to wash those hands again.
Now, remember how we do this...
Turn on that tap, wet those hands, and squeeze out some soap.
VERY GOOD, now scrub, scrub scrub.

Let's clean off those nasty bugs.
Well done. Now, remember...
Read your name badge so you know who you are...
Then on to the next patient.

See you soon, Doctor. Hi de Hi!"

Of course, these oh-so-useful devices aren't just to remind forgetful medics how to wash their hands. Oh, no. They can also be used to speak ward visiting times, or so it is claimed, although the volume will need to be turned right down so the constant repetition doesn't drive staff and patients any more nuts than they are already.

It seems to me that this is a solution looking for a problem. Every hospital ward that I have ever visited - and that's a lot of wards - has had a perfectly serviceable notice board, with visiting times pinned on it in LARGE letters. Why would a recorded message be any better? I suppose it might help the blind and those who can't read, but then, how the hell would they find their own way to the ward in the first place? And what about deaf visitors? They won't be able to hear it at all, particularly if the volume is low.

Come on, guys, get a grip. If you really want to fight MRSA etc, quit buggering about with these toys and invest in a few more cleaners. The NHS in Worcester has more than a few failings to make up for, and I don't think recorded messages are going to go very far towards that objective. Get real.

Billy Seggars.

Fingered

Greater Manchester Police are trying to put their hands on the owner of a severed fingertip. The detached digit was apparently discovered when a woman from Farnworth went to walk her neighbour's dog, and found it on the floor of her neighbour's property.

GMP are appealing for anyone who has lost a fingertip in an accident in the last few days to contact Bolton CID, although the spokeswoman did not say whether they would be put through to the lost property department.

In the meantime, forensic test are being carried out on the gruesome find - perhaps in the hope that it will finger someone.

Billy Seggars.

Bath Towels and Blithering Idiots

Just when you think you've plumbed the murky depths of Health and Safety lunacy, you realise that you haven't even scratched the surface of this festering make-work blight on society.

Today, several newspapers, including the Sun and the Daily Mail, have featured an astonishing piece of research from the Health and Safety Executive. Not, I hasten to add, astonishing in terms of the results it has produced, which are, apparently, inconclusive.

No, the sheer amazement comes from the fact that it has taken place at all. It seems that the HSE bods have spent several months and £12,000 researching bath towels, and have produced an official report to prove it. The report, called "Role of Towels as a Control to Reduce Slip Potential" - catchy title, eh? - explains how these terminally under worked researchers tried out towels on various surfaces, both wet and dry, to see how easy it was to make them slip. Or, to put it another way, they were examining the friction between the towel and the floor, in an effort to determine whether wet or dry towels slip more easily on each kind of surface.

Friction? More like fiction, except you just couldn't make this kind of nonsense up. If ever there was proof that the Health and Safety Executive spends its time (and our money) on utterly useless interventions into every-day life, this report is it. But it gets better. The report, they say, is inconclusive, and more research is needed. For which they want another £12k and year in which to conduct their study.

Clearly, these folks have too much time on their hands, and far too much tax-payers' money to waste. Far from letting them spend more time and money on research that anyone with any common sense whatsoever could explain to them in roughly 45 seconds (if they're a slow talker), they should all be forced to get a real job. Or, failing that, they should be forced to pay for research into how many people think they're a bunch of skivers with less grip on the needs of society than a dry towel has on a dry floor - and yes, that was one of the permutations they tested.

Billy Seggars.

Neil Bacon of DNUK resigns?

Rumours are reaching my ears that Dr Neil Bacon, founder and CEO of the doctors-only website, Doctors.net.uk, may have resigned. At this time, I have no idea whether they're true or not, and I can't find any references to his alleged departure on the web.

If anyone knows anything about the current real status of management at DNUK, I'd appreciate confirmation about this one way or another.

Billy Seggars.

Print And Be Damned

Is there no end to the ever-growing list of things that are "bad for you"? It seems not, and nothing is immune from scrutiny in the ongoing quest to unmask the latest "threat" to our health.

Obviously, the humble cigarette, not to mention the luckless smoker of same, has become a social leper at the hands - and propaganda - of the Health Fascists. But, unsated by this "glorious" victory, they have now set their sights on an even more insidious evil - nothing less than the common laser printer.

Now, in my not inconsiderable experience, laser printers - and, for that matter, all forms of information technology - can be cranky, capricious pieces of equipment, capable of inducing stress and frustration in even the most placid tech or office worker. But, apart from in fairly obvious and limited ways - such as dropping one on your toe - they've never struck me as being particularly hazardous to health.

Evidently, I was wrong, as a team of boffins from Australia have now discovered. It seems that a third of computer printers - and photocopiers - produce high concentrations of ultra-fine dust that can damage the lungs in much the same way as tobacco smoke.

I am outraged! Appalled! What is the government going to do about it, I want to know? Surely, it's time to rush through some emergency legislation? I know, how about this: ban all printing in enclosed public places, including offices and company cars, and force employers to pin up damn great "NO PRINTING ON THESE PREMISES" type signs! That should do it!

I fully expect all NHS Trusts to immediately implement a ban on printing anywhere on the premises, including in your own car on the car park, and remove any public printing shelters that they might have inadvertently set up. Staff will, henceforth, be seen nipping out to a side street off hospital grounds to print their letters, although I don't expect this to have any noticeable impact on appointment bookings, which are already shambolic to a degree beyond my ability to vilify.

Far fetched? I doubt it. Once the Health Fascists get hold of an idea, it won't be long before they're using it to exercise ever more control over our freedom of choice - for "our own good", of course. But it does beg the question: will they be using laser printers to push their half-baked ideas this time? And did the report's authors use one to print out their findings?

We deserve to be told!

Billy Seggars.