Posted By Jez Corfield John This kind of thing is a real problem - people get a bee in their bonnet and stick their noses in where they have no remit. Under the previous R&I regime I have seen reports for care homes with squeaky hinges raised as a H&S issue! This could be an internal NHS initiative - and therefore could be challenged and not legally binding. If this is a formal inspection (Healthcare Commission etc) then I would suspect that this would not be part of their remit, and could possibly be challenged (if feeling brave enough) - it would be interesting to see if they have cross referenced this to any actual standards or have done a report at all. Jez

Posted By Roger the Dodger You wouldn't believe some of the over reaction that goes on in the NHS. I got asked to investigate a claim of staff distress because a patient had unexpectedly touched a nurse. The patient was old and has mental health problems

Posted By J Knight It's a good job they didn't find the simply red cd...

Posted By J Knight Hi Stuart, Funnily enough they didn't seem remotely concerned with the risk of injury to the people actually using the saw, nor about their training in using it, nor about its condition, nor about the fairly obvious dangers involved in wandering about a busy ward carrying a loaded saw... John

Posted By Stuart Nagle Hi, 'J'. Tell me... Is there a long list to draw out the saw from reception for the committing of suicide yet? or a que forming to stelthilly withdraw the buttins from the furniture.... With this death monger wandering about the place it's highly likely. What about the buttons on the chairs... are they the type with the short metal hook'eye on the reverse.... I could see the pateints plucking their eyes out with them, perhaps in a fit of rage over the colour of the hospital cabbage, but suicide!!! I suppose if they got them all out, straightened the pins out over a few days, with some stolen surgical tweesers, laid them all up on a board with some glue and dived on them from the fourth floor win....OH MY GOD.....THE WINDOWS.....ANOTHER SUICIDE RISK!!!!! OH NO.....DOES THE CHAPPY KNOW ABOUT THIS POTENTIAL RISK....!!!!..... then they might actually manage to kill themselves rather than plucking out viens etc...yukky.... perhaps you would be so good to give us a hint of where this place is .....so we can all avoid it like the MRSA..... Stuart

Posted By Jason Touraine John Sounds like .[expletive deleted] to me. Are you sure your friend's not winding you up? They think you're one of those gullible safety folk.

Posted By Neil Pearson This has to be the best title for a thread I've ever seen.

Posted By J Knight Just to respond to a point; I am sure that the story in the original posting is entirely true. A few people have made the point that a serious suicide will use anything they can; I agree entirely and I have a story from within a care setting about this. Somebody wanted to kill themselves; they were quite serious about it, so serious in fact that they didn't tell staff what they were planning. This was a physically disabled person, but cognitively quite intact (very bright in fact) and relatively independent. They drank a cup of fairy liquid. Fairy liquid is not toxic, but a whole cup will induce vomitting, and this person then aspirated the vomit (possibly deliberately). Vomit in the lungs is potentially fatal, of course; it is even worse when the vomit contains a surfactant as this defeats the surface tension in the alveoli and causes the lungs to collapse. This person was so determined to die that they actually pulled out the tubes on the way to the hospital, but they did eventually make a recovery of sorts. Did we ban fairy liquid? Did we eckers like! This was a service for fairly independent people, who valued the freedom of doing their own washing up (and other kitchen stuff). We believed from the outset that the suicide attempt only used fairy because it was handy. This person would have been quite free to go to the supermarket and buy their own fairy liquid, come to that. They could, for that matter, have just sat in their wheelchair on the nearby main road on the handy blind bend. They were going to try and end it all, and they were going to do it without flagging it up and using whatever means they could. In other words, we did a risk assessment, and none of the enforcing or regulatory bodies involved ever suggested that we had reached the wrong conclusions. MRSA is a bad thing, it's something we struggle with in my current place of work. Maybe if the infection control person had said that studded upholstery is difficult to clean and could harbour MRSA it would be possible to take them seriously, but suicide! Good grief! The hospital in question is not too far from Sheffield, John

Posted By Andy Petrie A friend of mine works in a psych ward and someone hung themselves from the underside of the bed using a shoe lace, not a saw in sight. Rod, sorry to be pedantic but you get burns off hot radiators not scalds.

Posted By Zoe Barnett I think that the physios should ignore the advice and get the saw back out. If the person who made the recommendation challenges them they should ask him for his opinion in writing, backed up with a comprehensive risk assessment, a summary of the numbers of hospital suicides involving saws, and copies of his H&S qualifications. If no-one's brave enough to take this approach, would they be able to use one of those rotating saws which are used to remove plaster casts? These don't cut skin and even should foil even the most determined suicide attempt. I also whole heartedly agree with the posts about MRSA. It's passed on by people, not by cobwebs. (Which is just as well, given the state of my house!) Or - oh no - given the tensile strength of spider web - have I just unwittingly uncovered a whole new hanging hazard?!

Posted By jackw. Hi friend of mine swears by a jim reeve record and a good strong rope.. never fails to kill them off. pity this "nut" didn't actually concentrate on the real issues of infection in our hospitals MRSA etc. hmm had a late thought why not put him/her to good use as an extra cleaner in a hospital.. trying to really clean a ward in the time they are given by those lovely contracted out service companies..would make them suicidal. cheers ya all.. keep healthy but remember if you don't you may survive in spite of the hospitals best efforts!!!!!

Posted By John Murgatroyd That's negative ions, positive ions are supposed to be responsible for people feeling ill. Although tests on each have shown that any effects are short lived and very sporadic. Bad "negative ion generators" can produce ozone, which, again, makes you feel ill. Don't believe me ? Google it. the BMA reckons it's all tosh, neither have any effect.