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Making hospitals safe for patients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Amos Millington ,
Tom Carnwath  and
Ted McGuinness
Amos Millington
Affiliation:
Mental Health, Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust, Trafford General Hospital Moorside Road, Davyhulme, Manchester M41 5SL
Tom Carnwath*
Affiliation:
Mental Health, Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust, Trafford General Hospital Moorside Road, Davyhulme, Manchester M41 5SL
Ted McGuinness
Affiliation:
Mental Health, Trafford Healthcare NHS Trust, Trafford General Hospital Moorside Road, Davyhulme, Manchester M41 5SL
*
∗Correspondence
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“It may seem a strange principle to enunciate, as the very first requirement of a hospital, that it should do the sick no harm” (Nightingale, 1859).

The principle is less strange today than when it was first proposed, but making hospitals safe for patients is no easier. Stepping aside from one danger, one may fall into the path of another. Legionella risks can be avoided by higher water temperatures but this in turn introduces a risk of scalding. Security measures can protect the individual and work space but may compromise fire safety. This paper describes a similar problem of conflicting safety measures and its unfortunate consequences.

Type
Original Papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 22 , Issue 5 , May 1998 , pp. 313 - 314
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

References

Nightingale, F. (1859) Notes on Hospitals. London: John W. Parker and Sons.Google Scholar
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