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HEALTHCARE HYGIENE


HYGIENE STANDARDS


David Davies, Managing Director of Checkit, discusses how digital checklist technology can help healthcare organisations maintain high hygiene standards and improve safety, efficiency and productivity.


Healthcare environments have traditionally relied on various checklists to ensure patient safety and compliance with regulation. There are thousands of checks that need to be completed daily, hourly or even more regularly, including checking the temperature of the fridges holding patient samples and medication, checking on the progress of patients recovering from surgery, checking the safety of the patient facilities to prevent accidents, it is clear to see that the healthcare system runs on checklists.


However, traditional paper-based lists present the potential for mistakes, human errors and even fraud, increasing the risk of serious consequences to patients.


Checklists are a daily aid in various healthcare organisations, helping staff to keep track of tasks and enable the management team to see when a task has been completed. However, printing checklists and then manually entering the results into IT systems for record keeping is inefficient, adding to costs, increasing errors and unnecessarily tying up staff and management time. In an environment where irregular shift patterns can mean that multiple people are in charge of completing


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the daily tasks and monitoring the results, it can be difficult and time- consuming to maintain routines to the required standards. On top of this, ensuring consistent compliance can be a challenge if the facility is spread across multiple sites.


One way to counter these issues is by going digital. Digital work management technology, including digital checklists and wireless monitoring, can help improve safety and compliance to regulate and improve productivity by vastly reducing the time required to complete the daily checks and record the results. By replacing traditional paper-based systems with a centralised, interactive cloud-based system, the need for physical storage space for records is eliminated. The


checklists needed for completing the daily tasks can be programmed directly into a digital system and viewed by staff on handheld touch-screen devices. The system will prompt staff when a task is due, providing instructions on what needs to be done. The results are recorded on the handset and directly uploaded to the cloud. If the results of the check are not acceptable, the device will provide information on the next steps required to correct the issue.


Cloud-based storage also removes the possibility of anyone tampering with records and reduces the risk of filing incorrect information. This is critical from a legal and compliance point of view: should a hygiene or health and safety related incident occur, the digital records can provide solid, time-stamped proof that the required checks were completed and the facility maintained as required.


A good starting point for improving overall hygiene in a healthcare facility is to review all areas separately, in order to ensure that each entity complies with the required standards. For example, any issues with the hygiene level of the industrial-sized hospital kitchen can


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CHECKING UP ON


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