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Exclusive: Three-fifths of GPs lack information on MRSA
20-Mar-08
The future role of GPs in tackling MRSA looks inevitable as the Health Protection Agency (HPA) strengthens its guidance for GPs.
The HPA plans to publish GP-specific guidance at the end of April.
Its draft guideline on community acquired MRSA, published in November, will include advice for GPs following feedback from the RCGP.
The HPA has already called for GPs to be involved in screening patients with recurrent abscesses or necrotising tissue for community acquired MRSA.
Community acquired MRSA is feared to be a growing problem in the UK, especially as 2 per cent of cases carry the tissue necrotising toxin Panton-Valentine leukocidin.
In a GP survey of 169 GPs, 62.1 per cent of respondents had not received any information on what to do in a suspected case of MRSA.
Those who had received information got this from a range of sources, such as local microbiologists, and often only after they requested it.
When asked to rate their knowledge of MRSA, just 21.3 per cent of GPs said ‘good'. A further 2.4 per cent rated their knowledge ‘excellent', 59.2 per cent ‘fair' and 17.2 per cent ‘poor'.
The survey also showed that 52 per cent of respondents backed GPs testing patients for community acquired MRSA and 85.2 per cent believed controlling antibiotic prescribing would help tackle the superbug.
Dr Maureen Baker, honorary secretary of the RCGP, said: ‘Obviously, if patients are symptomatic and they need treatment then, yes, there's a need to know.
‘There's also the need to know if there's anything to do with asymptomatic MRSA in the community.'
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Comments
Mary Hawking
21/03/2008
Who would you screen and how would the screening be financed?
Aren't there separate issues here? If you have a patient with recurent boils and/or tissue necrosis, I suspect that as a GP you might get a swab to check for organisms and sensitivities - more so if the condition was not responding to treatment - and this is already covered in present systems.
If, on the other hand you want to know how much MRSA there is in the community, you would have to either swab everyone or decide on a target population - and the resource implications both for GPs and microbiology labs are considerable.
If hospitals are now screeining on admission, do we have any figures relating reported MRSA (aren't these based on blood cultures?) and patients carrying MRSA on pre-admission screening? i.e. are carriers more at risk of complications than non-carriers?
It might give some idea of the cost-effectiveness of the screening scheme..
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