Details
About THE ROBERT JONES & AGNES HUNT HOSPITAL - Orthopedic Surgery Hospital
Welcome to the Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic & District Hospital NHS Trust
The Trust is a specialist hospital providing elective orthopaedic
surgery and musculo-skeletal medical services.
It is committed to providing the best possible care, training
and research to benefit the people of England, Wales and beyond.
It also provides some local hospital services for the communities in and around Oswestry.
This website has been created to help explain what the Trust
does and we hope it will answer some of your questions. We are
always looking for ways to improve our website and your views
are very important to us so if you have any comments or suggestions please contact us.
Our History
Agnes Hunt was born into a Shropshire land-owning family in
1867. At the age of nine, she developed a painful hip condition,
despite which she later trained as a nurse. In 1900, she opened
a convalescent home for children in Baschurch, the forerunner of the present hospital.
In 1903, her hip problem led her to consult the eminent orthopaedic
surgeon Robert Jones of Liverpool. He was impressed by her
work, and became Consultant to the Baschurch Home. Under their
joint leadership, it flourished and developed into an orthopaedic
hospital treating patients of all ages, on open-air principles.
It became the 'Shropshire Orthopaedic Hospital ' after moving to its present site in 1921.
After Robert Jones' death in 1933, the hospital was renamed
'The Robert Jones & Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital'. Agnes
Hunt died in 1948, shortly after the foundation of the National
Health Service. In 1994, the hospital became a self-governing
NHS Trust, and on 1st October 2000, celebrated the centenary of its foundation.
Infection Rates
What is Infection?
We all have bacteria, good and bad, in and on our bodies.
Eliminating them entirely is neither possible nor is it always
desirable. Infections occur when the bacteria get through our defences into the body.
MRSA bacterium - is simply an antibiotic-resistant strain
of Staphylococcus aureus, a bug we normally have that is often
found harmlessly on the skin surface, in the nose or in the
environment. You will have heard about national MRSA figures.
These relate to the severest MRSA infections where the bacteria
gets into the bloodstream from an infection elsewhere. The
Trust has reported just ONE case of this type of infection in the last 12 months.
ESBL E coli and Klebsiella - another antibiotic-resistant
bacteria, which lives in the gut and can spread to the bladder
after urinary catherterisation and cause urinary infection.
These urinary and bloodstream infections are uncommon at the
Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic and District Hospital NHS Trust.
Clostridium difficile - a bacterium that causes diarrhoea
after antibiotics. Again the Trust has very low rates of this infection.
What does the Trust do to control infection?
The Trust has one of the lowest infection rates in the country.
It has an infection-control nurse and a consultant microbiologist
who advise on infection control measures and the hospital
has seven special ultra-clean-air theatre for surgery. To
find out more about its unique theatres click here.
All staff are told and encouraged to clean their hands between
attending to individual people by hand washing and by using
alcohol hand rub. The latter is available for their use in every patient area.
What is the hospital infection rate?
For surgical wounds, the Trust's rates of infection have been
consistently low since 2002. National infection rates are
higher than our rates. These rates are for infection detected while in hospital after the surgery.
