Sorry I am late.

I am about to sound just like an MP. “Bragging and boastful and pompous” I hear you say, yep, that’s right.

On Tuesday I intervened on the Secretary of State for Health. It wasn’t a planned intervention, it was completely spontaneous. She was providing the House with a list of the measures that a hospital she had visited was putting in place to tackle MRSA.

I asked her if whilst she was visiting this hospital had she looked out of the window at the staff car park, and seen the nursing staff arriving for work in their uniform, having maybe just dropped off a toddler at a nursery, and getting back into the car they use to transport the family dog around.

I didn’t know until someone told me that it was on the radio programme ‘Today in Parliament’, and the ‘Today Programme’ on Radio 4 the following morning, intervention quoted in full!

My first ‘Today’!

The reason why I was so inspired to jump up and intervene on the Secretary of State for Health was because we were discussing the alarming rise in the rate of community MRSA.

Well excuse me for stating the obvious, but, if you have nurses who leave a hospital environment which contains MRSA in their uniform and go out into the community, it is only a matter of time before the MRSA they have transported into the community starts walking back into the hospital on the clothes of visitors.

If all nurses changed in and out of their uniforms whilst in their hospital environment, and if those uniforms were laundered on site at the right temperature with the right chemicals, and better still, if showering facilities were available, we would crack MRSA at a rapid rate.

It’s simply common sense – why is it in such short supply in this place? Because everyone is too busy bragging and being boastful and pompous!

You watch this space though. The realisation that this is the right approach will dawn, eventually!