MRSA and superbugs

About MRSA and superbugs

Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, better known as MRSA can kill, lead to amputation, prevent healing, and generally causes misery to thousands of patients as well as their family and friends.

Likewise other superbugs such as Clostridium difficile, Pseudomonas and GRE.

MRSA lives most commonly in healthcare environments. It is transferred to patients by poor hygiene practices. People are particularly vulnerable to infection following surgery, especially when they have an open wound or direct IV access. However, MRSA is often avoidable. In Sweden, thanks to the government’s commitment both financially and in terms of ensuring the healthcare sector put in place a series of processes to keep standards of hygiene permanently high, MRSA does not exist in the country’s healthcare system.

The UK has not fared so well. Hospitals and Government have until more recently been slow to deal with MRSA which is spread between patients largely due to poor hygiene and has become common place. Hospitals have always said it is not their fault patients become infected, however in many situations the Courts now disagree.

MRSA can present itself in different ways. A patient can be ‘colonised’ with MRSA, which means that the bacteria is living and breeding on the skin (usually in the nose or groin) of that person but without any effect or causing any injury. Alternatively, the patient can be infected by the bacteria and if it is not treated immediately it can in extreme cases, cause death or the need for amputation and in less severe cases considerably slow down the healing process. Anyone can carry MRSA on their skin or clothes and transfer the bacteria to another by touch.

Have you been affected?

We can help you claim compensation if we can prove the hospital to have been at fault.

We need to show either that you contracted your superbug infection in hospital and that the hospital failed to carry out proper hygiene practices (for example did staff fail to wash their hands between visiting patients or were the wards dirty). Or, we need to show that once your colonisation or infection was identified proper steps were not taken to reduce the impact on you. 

We then need to show how the outcome of your medical treatment would have been improved had your infection been avoided or its severity reduced.

How our medical negligence lawyers can help

In some hospitals and for some treatments patients are tested (by swab) for MRSA colonisation when admitted to hospital. If you were not already colonised on admission or if the strain which infected you was different to the one with which you were colonised we can establish that you became colonised with MRSA whilst in hospital. 

Our aim will be to show that:

• The hospital failed to carry out proper hygiene practices, including the failure to have a proper strategy to deal with hospital infections. This may have included hospital staff not washing their hands between visiting patients, failing to properly clean wards, sheets, and equipment, failing to monitor infection rates and close wards or failing to monitor and change IV access points. We can rely on witness statements and hospital ward and hygiene records to show this, or
• You were colonised with MRSA while in hospital and that the hospital failed to properly implement an infection control strategy, enabling us to prove that you became colonised with MRSA because of the hospital’s failings, or
• The hospital was aware that you were colonised with MRSA but failed to take proper steps to prevent your colonisation becoming an infection, or 
• Having identified your infection, appropriate steps were not taken to cure it.

Depending on the outcomes of the above, we may be able to show that your infection was due to inadequate care. We will then show how your recovery and/or treatment would have been improved had your MRSA infection been avoided.

Medical negligence compensation claims based on contraction of a superbug are not straightforward and it has to be proved that errors were made which allowed the condition to be contracted or made worse. A case based on a failure to properly treat the condition once diagnosed is likely to be easier to establish than one based on allegations of a lack of hygiene as that is so difficult to prove subsequently. Our medical negligence lawyers have considerable experience in advising people in these circumstances so do contact us and we will advise you whether we feel that you have a negligence case.

We guarantee that there will be no cost to you in bringing a medical negligence claim.