The Clinical Director at St Luke’s Hospital has described claims that maternity patients will be put at risk of infection there as ‘alarmist’.
Professor Garry Courtney spoke on KCLR Live this morning in response to the concerns raised last week by consultant obstetrician at the hospital, Professor Ray O’Sullivan.
Professor Courtney says he can understand that Professor O’Sullivan was advocating on behalf of his own patients but he said there will not be patients on the corridors in the maternity unit.
Fears have also been raised by local TD Kathleen Funchion over the potential risks posed by putting patients from the general hospital population on the maternity floor.
But Professor Courtney says that is simply not the case:
“Obviously when we’re doing something there’s a very standard way of doing it. All hospitals upgrade. All hospitals bring in an infection control team and a microbiologist. So as you’d expect we’ve had meetings with the microbiologist, a consultant, we’ve had meetings with the infection control team. This will all be done in a proper way. If there’s an older, an infected patient, they will be put into a standard ward bed. A post-op patient, female, recovering from surgery and not infected, will be put up in what we call the surge ward.”
