INFECTION CONTROL
Raising hospital cleaning standards
Many UK hospitals continue to rely on visual assessment of cleanliness, despite the fact that this can only detect gross lapses in practice. At an international conference on infection control, experts called for the UK to follow Denmark’s lead in adopting an approved standard, using quantitative testing of cleaning performance. LOUISE FRAMPTON reports
At the 9th Healthcare Infection Society (HIS) International Conference, Lyon, France, Hygiena sponsored an educational workshop on how to assess hospital cleanliness. The symposium, Introducing an Approved Standard for Measuring Hospital Cleanliness, featured a panel of distinguished speakers who considered the question: ‘How can we reduce healthcare-associated infection with better management and control of the environment?’
The aim of the workshop was to
provide an understanding of Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) hygiene monitoring technology in the context of the first government approved standard to be developed for cleaning in hospitals. Denmark has led the way in the adoption of the standard, followed by Sweden, but there is now the potential for other countries to follow their example, as they seek to drive improvement in hospital hygiene. There are many applications of the
ATP test that have been developed over 30 years but the most widely used is that of an objective cleaning verification test. ATP is the universal energy carrier that is present in all living things including body fluids and bacteria. When ATP reacts with the enzyme luciferase, it
produces a release of energy in the form of light, called bioluminescence. This enables the presence of ATP to be detected as a light output. ATP test systems use a detection swab to collect a sample from the surface to be tested. The swab is then activated and inserted into a reader and a numeric reading (Relative Light Units, RLU) is produced. “ATP technology is one of the few
infection prevention products to be assessed by the Rapid Review Panel, for potential use in the NHS, to receive the highest level of approval, with a Category 1 recommendation. However, other European countries are ahead of the UK in terms of the standardisation of hospital cleaning – there is still an over-reliance on subjective assessment of cleanliness in the NHS, and this needs to change,” commented Martin Easter, general manager, Hygiena International.
Assessing hospital cleanliness Chaired by Dr Phil Carling, infectious disease specialist, Boston University School of Medicine, US, the symposium highlighted the high costs of failure to effectively clean the hospital environment. Martin Easter made reference to
Martin Kiernan (a former president of the Infection Prevention Society), who
Other European countries are ahead of the UK in terms of the standardisation of hospital cleaning – there is still an over-reliance on subjective assessment of cleanliness in the NHS, and this needs to change.
APRIL 2015
Better control = Reduced risk
equated the number of deaths from healthcare-acquired infection to one jumbo jet crash per month in the EU. This level of mortality would provoke outrage in the airline industry. However, many of these deaths from healthcare- associated infection could be prevented. Martin Easter pointed out that the patient environment is recognised as a reservoir of contamination. Hayden et al, (2006)1
for example, concluded that
decreasing environmental contamination helps to control the spread of antibiotic resistant bacteria in hospitals. The study, which included 748 admissions to an intensive care unit over a nine-month period, found that enforcing routine environmental cleaning measures was associated with less surface contamination with vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), cleaner healthcare worker hands, and a significant reduction in VRE cross-transmission.
THE CLINICAL SERVICES JOURNAL 21
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68