How To Make A&E Effi cient
Stephen Wright, from SCA, looks at the types of hand hygiene systems that can ensure speed, efficiency and hygiene in the healthcare sector – and in A&E units in particular.
Mounting pressure on A&E units, and the emergence of worrying new viruses, such as MERS-CoV, has led to major challenges for accident and emergency staff. On the one hand, they need to treat the large numbers of patients coming through their doors with speed and effi ciency, while on the other, they must ensure that hand hygiene is never compromised since this could lead to serious, even fatal, mistakes.
The UK’s hospital emergency departments are currently in crisis. They have been described by the Royal College of Nursing as "dangerously overburdened", and many are said to be at breaking point. Meanwhile, evidence gathered by the Health Select Committee suggests that only 17% of A&E units have a consultant available for at least 16 hours a day during the working week. So, staff are becoming increasingly stretched and a growing number of demands
32 | HEALTHCARE & HOSPITAL HYGIENE
are being made on their already limited time.
Hygiene is critical in any healthcare setting, but in A&E it is absolutely crucial, since patients will be presenting open wounds that can easily become infected. Meanwhile, those suffering from contagious illnesses are increasingly likely to go straight to the emergency department, particularly in the evenings and at weekends when their local GP surgery may be closed.
In 2009, when swine fl u was at its height, some UK hospitals saw a 17% increase in people attending A&E. This occurred despite the fact that those same hospitals put up signs asking patients with fl u- like symptoms to stay away and to contact their GPs instead. A new virus has now emerged and, although so far most cases have occurred in the Middle East, there have been four laboratory-confi rmed cases in the UK. Three of the British
victims of the MERS-CoV virus, formerly known as novel coronavirus, have now died – the most recent of which occurred in July.
So, the average A&E department is a hotbed of germs and infection risks, and this means that good hand hygiene practices are vital. But, thorough hand washing and drying takes time – a commodity of which A&E staff are notoriously short. This means that all hand hygiene facilities and products provided in emergency units should be convenient, easy to access, effi cient and user-friendly to increase their effectiveness – as well as the likelihood that staff will use them.
Mild soaps such as Tork Extra Mild Foam and liquid soaps are ideal in such environments. These are suffi ciently gentle to protect the hands from dryness, even when used frequently between each patient contact. And the Tork foam soap dispenser in Elevation format
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