HEALTHCARE HYGIENE
Simple ways to improve healthcare hygiene
Paul Mulready, Marketing Manager of Northwood Hygiene Products, offers advice on how to minimise the spread of contagious illnesses in healthcare settings.
With many infectious diseases around at any time, it’s important for healthcare providers to take preventative steps to stop their occurrence and spread. However, with the right protocols, these risks can be effectively managed, resulting in less germ transmission and sickness.
Many diseases are spread by not washing hands properly with soap and water, so handwashing should always be a first line of defence. Preventing sickness is crucial, because this reduces the amount of antibiotics people use and the likelihood that antibiotic resistance will develop.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), handwashing can prevent about 30% of diarrhoea-related sicknesses and about 20% of respiratory infections, such as colds. Antibiotics are often prescribed unnecessarily, but if we reduce the number of infections by washing hands frequently, we can help prevent the overuse of antibiotics – the leading cause of antibiotic resistance.
Handwashing can also help prevent people from becoming sick with germs that are already resistant to antibiotics and difficult to treat.
Prioritise hygiene
In a healthcare setting, frequent and thorough handwashing and drying, particularly after entering or leaving a building, when mixing with different patients or when touching surfaces that could be contaminated with viruses, is still one of the best ways to combat infection.
Handwashing and sanitising products should be in staff and public washrooms, but they can also be placed in prominent high-traffic areas too. All dispensers for soap and paper should be quick and easy to operate to encourage people to use them. It’s also vital that dispensers are kept well- stocked at all times and are easy to refill to avoid run-outs.
Soap dispensers should be high capacity and deliver a generous shot to encourage single, efficient use. They should ideally be non-drip to help keep spaces clean and each new soap cartridge should include a new nozzle to minimise the likelihood of bacteria harbouring.
Drying dilemma
Did you know that bacteria transmit much faster via wet hands than dry hands? With air dryers, few people take enough time to properly dry their hands, often rubbing their hands on their clothes, which might be contaminated. This means that people are still carrying germs on their hands
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when they leave the washroom to spread elsewhere. Germs can land on washroom door handles when people walk out of the facility, which can transmit to items such as hospital lanyards, stethoscopes and medical equipment.
Some studies have also found that friction is a key component of hand drying to help remove contamination, meaning the action of drying hands with paper towels can actually help to remove bacteria. Providers should therefore ideally provide a long-lasting supply of paper towels to encourage people to dry their hands thoroughly.
The type of paper towel dispenser you provide for people is important. For instance, dispensers for folded towels will run out more quickly, so maintenance staff may be tempted to overfill dispensers with more than the recommended towels, which can make it difficult for people to pull out a single towel from the bottom. C-fold towels can frequently dispense in clumps, meaning users often take multiple towels to dry their hands which can be wasteful option.
A mechanical hands-free roll towel dispenser is an alternative. As well as optimising hygiene because the user does not need to touch the unit, these dispensers tend to offer a higher paper capacity than folded towels.
Northwood’s Raphael proprietary washroom system is often specified because it can cater for any washroom environment and it delivers improved washroom hygiene standards, whilst also saving money and reducing waste.
An effective washroom is a must to help control the spread of germs. Finding solutions that allow people to easily maintain good hand hygiene can make hospitals and healthcare settings safer and improve public health.
www.northwood.co.uk x.com/TomoCleaning
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