James takes aim at health care in Burnaby

By Dan Hilborn
Published May 14, 2005


A young woman from Burnaby was thrust into the media spotlight Wednesday morning when she joined NDP leader Carole James and Burnaby North candidate Pietro Calendino at a press conference that claimed a lack of cleanliness at Burnaby Hospital is putting patients' lives at risk.

Robin Lowe said she is still suffering the effects of an infection she contracted after she entered Burnaby Hospital on April 18 for what should have been a simple one-day appendectomy operation.

"I want to focus on the hospital's state of cleanliness, which I found appalling," said Lowe, who described herself as a former Green Party supporter. "Our bathroom in a post-op room was filthy. ... The toilet was never cleaned.

"I was so afraid of developing a worsening infection that my trips to the bathroom consisted of cleaning the door handles, the taps and the toilet before I used them," she said, adding that she was put into a room with two men and had to ask her friends and family to change her bedsheets during her stay.

"My life was put at risk simply to save this province money," she said.

Lowe said that she does not blame the cleaning staff for the problems she encountered.

"My problem is not with the skill of the staff," she said. "These were low-paid workers who were not well trained."

When Lowe questioned one female cleaner why she was sweating profusely while she performed her duties, she learned that same person was responsible for cleaning four wards each day.

When Lowe complained to the nurses, she was told that there is little they could do to have emergency spills cleaned up because of a hospital policy that requires staff to call a central dispatch phone number in order to take care of non-routine cleaning needs.

Lowe said that she agreed to speak at the NDP press conference because she is not convinced that the Green Party has a plan for the future of health care.

"I was lying in a hospital bed watching TV and I didn't hear the leader of the Green Party talking about health care," she said. "Nobody was talking about fixing our health-care system except Carole James."

Meanwhile, James insisted the NDP would "not tear up" any contracts with private housekeeping firms that work in B.C. hospitals and instead would demand that those companies uphold the standards in their existing contracts.

"I think the cleaning staff needs to be regulated," James said. "I want to open the contracts to public scrutiny and hold the companies responsible.

"Unlike Gordon Campbell, I am not going to rip up contracts," she said.

James also said that Lowe's complaints are part of the greater problems in the health care system that include longer waiting lists, and the closure or elimination of beds during the past four years.

James noted that city lost 234 extended care beds plus 25 per cent of the acute care beds that used to be at Burnaby Hospital, while city residents "fought tooth and nail" to ensure the emergency room at the hospital stayed open.

Meanwhile, an official with the Fraser Health Authority said that cleaning standards at Burnaby Hospital have steadily improved since the service was contracted out to Sodexho MS Canada Ltd. on April 1, 2004.

Simrita Johal said that all bathrooms in area hospitals are cleaned once per day, and bedsheets are changed every two or three days on average, and immediately if they become soiled.

"Definitely, if a person is staying in a multibedded room with three or four patients, absolutely the bathrooms may become filthy over the course of the day. But I'm not sure if that's what happened in this case," she said. "I don't know if she even contacted nursing staff. If she did and if the bathrooms still weren't cleaned, then absolutely we would look into it."

Johal also said that it is possible that the bathroom was cleaned early in the day, but became soiled before Lowe used it.

Johal also said that the health authority has no formal record of Lowe's complaints during her stay, and said officials can only react to problems when they are made aware of them.

"If people have concerns about anything - about cleanliness in the hospitals or about the care they receive - they should call us," she said. "We're always looking for improvement based on feedback from patients."

In March, the six B.C. health authorities signed a contract with Westech Systems Inc. to conduct an impartial third-party audit of cleanliness standards in the hospitals that will include "unscheduled and unannounced" visits by auditors, and public release of the results of their survey.