HOSPITAL staff are being forced to clean up their act after cases of the MRSA killer bug exceeded limits across Worcestershire.

Compulsory training in infection control, which covers everything from cleaning your hands to health and safety, is to start for all staff at the county's hospitals in April.

Health chiefs have imposed the rule after they admitted they could not prove whether staff were attending current training sessions.

Since April, there have been 30 patients diagnosed with the superbug at Worcestershire's three hospitals - the full year target from the Department of Health is just 24 cases.

Dr Chris Catchpole, director of infection prevention and control at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the Worcestershire Royal in Worcester, Kidderminster Hospital and the Alexandra, Redditch, said: "All staff are supposed to receive infection control training at least once a year but we can't prove that this is the case.

"We need to get more creative in how we deliver that and we need to make a plan that this is a mandatory thing. "We have to make sure that we capture all the training opportunities.

"We can't expect people to practise to the best standards unless they know what they are supposed to be doing. Training and monitoring performance is critical."

Dr Catchpole added said some of the killer bug cases were related to poorly taken blood tests - with the MRSA picked up from skin contaminants rather from the bloodstream.

Meanwhile, a hand hygiene experiment carried out at the Royal found just a third of doctors and nurses used the wall-mounted alcohol gel, introduced in April 2005 - to clean their hands as they entered wards.

It also found that nearly 80 per cent of visitors were unaware of the gel.

Similar results were recorded at the Alexandra and Kidderminster.

However, hospital staff are encouraged to carry their own sprays.

Acute trust chief executive John Rostill said: "We clearly have a very challenging target. Having said that we've been pleased as a board with the input that we've made.

"But we are despondent with the outcome. There is something of a disconnection with the policies and what the practice is. From next April we will make it clear that training will be mandatory for controlling infection."

Leonard Iddon, of Hylton Road, Worcester, who has been a member of the MRSA Support Group since his wife Bridget contracted the bug and subsequently died, said he was pleased compulsory training was being introduced but questioned why basic hygiene measures still weren't employed in the county's hospitals.

He said: "You see doctors and nurses out and about in their uniforms and then going into the hospitals - who knows what germs they are taking in with them?"

The trust said that a pilot programme was now under way to determine whether it would be practical to screen every patient for MRSA when they were admitted.