"Basic Hygiene is appalling!"

I had a heavy fall on the ice and sustained a very deep cut to my knee with a suspected fracture and also injured my back. I was taken to A&E and the receptionist decided I should go straight to the minor injuries unit (MIU). I questioned whether this deep open wound should have been seen by a doctor

As it was early, we were the first in the MIU and the nurse put on a bandage on without cleaning the wound and sent me for xray. The Xray department said they needed to take the bandage off as it would show up on the Xray. It seemed to me that the MIU should have known this and that my extremely painful wound was being unnecessarily handled. Back at MIU the nurse, with no gloves on, wiped the bed down. Without washing hands, the nurse came over and pulled my wheelchair to the bed contaminating the handles. The nurse pulled over a 'workstation' trolley with their dirty hands. The nurse pulled open the drawers and rummaged through the dressings and syringes and opened sterile packages pulling out syringes and placed them on the 'sterile' tray. The nurse did the same with the dressings and tore open the clear plastic sachets containing the local anaesthetic with their nails and poured three of these into a compartment on the tray on top of the workstation trolley.

I felt so uncomfortable, I asked as politely as I could if the nurse was intending putting on gloves. The nurse said they were but that they were going to do the 'dirty work' first before they washed their hands and put on gloves. The nurse opened up the new dressings and started shaking the dressings on to the top of the station, now aware that I was concerned about their lack of cleanliness. The nurse took the bandage off my wound, peeling back the bloody dressing and dropped it into the bag attached to the trolley. The nurse finally washed their hands and then put on the blue gloves. They injected around my open wound and inside it around 8 times. I could feel the needle so the nurse had to inject me several times more and I could still feel the needle. With now bloody gloves, the nurse pulled open the workstation drawers and rummaged through the drawers to get more dressing. I mentioned tetanus and the nurse said that any previous tetanus jab will last forever, although the nurse never even asked me if I'd had a tetanus injection. They said they would give antibiotics, but later found out they couldn't. The nurse told me that they had looked at the xray and couldn't see anything obvious but someone trained would check it within 48 hrs. They said it wasn't a bruised bone as they couldn't see it on the Xray. I have since been told this would only show up on MRI. This is the 2nd time I have raised a hygiene issue at A&E, then a doctor had gloves on, opened doors & cupboards, wiped down a bed and began to attend a wound on my dad's eye. The doctor was cross when I asked them to change their gloves and with new gloves, put their hair behind their ears. No wonder PAH have an 'inadequate' rating and patients are contaminated with MRSA and other bugs. Watch this space for infection.