Efficient healthcare hygiene


Healthcare is all about urgency, but when it comes to hospital hygiene, corners can never be cut. Essity’s Liam Smith looks at ways of delivering optimum cleaning and hygiene outcomes in healthcare – and in double-quick time.


Speed is of the essence in the healthcare sector. Medical staff often need to act quickly in order to treat accident and trauma victims in a timely fashion, in order to ensure positive outcomes.


It’s also important that all cleaning tasks in a hospital are managed speedily and efficiently. For example, bodily fluids need to be cleaned up rapidly to prevent any potential spread of infections and viruses, while all surfaces should be wiped down immediately after being contaminated by an infectious patient.


The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the challenges faced by healthcare staff. As wards have been filling up with coronavirus patients, the cleaning teams have needed to be extra thorough and many hospitals have begun recruitment drives to bring in more cleaners.


Similarly, some hospitals have called in retired doctors and nurses along with newly-qualified medical students to boost their numbers. However, there is only a finite supply of medical workers in the world and doctors and nurses have been rushed off their feet as they try to contain the crisis, tend to patients and keep deaths to a minimum.


Patient numbers have risen steadily since the autumn. By December 2020, every hospital bed in Northern Ireland was declared to be full while a further 185 patients were awaiting admission.


In January it was reported that infection rates for the rest of Ireland were soaring again as a third wave began to loom. For healthcare chiefs, the grueling pandemic has been


12 | HEALTHCARE HYGIENE


relentless and they can never allow their guard to slip. So, any situation in which contaminated hands and equipment might enable the virus to spread more rapidly needs to be avoided at all costs.


Thorough hand hygiene was identified early on in the pandemic as a pivotal action to help reduce contamination. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), staff need to routinely wash their hands before touching a patient, before carrying out any aseptic procedure, after any exposure to body fluid, after touching a patient and after touching the patient’s surroundings.


The WHO also states that a healthcare worker’s visibly-soiled hands should be washed with soap and water for between 40 and 60 seconds and then thoroughly dried to ensure a thorough clean. If the hands are not visibly soiled, an alcohol gel may be used instead for a period of 30 seconds.


When healthcare staff are working for long shifts and looking after scores of patients though, do they actually have the time to wash or sanitise their hands for 30-60 seconds, and is there any way of speeding up the process?


Hand hygiene can never be skimped, according to the WHO. However, efforts can be made to make the process easier and more convenient for healthcare workers.


Hand washing and sanitising products should be placed in prominent positions on walking routes, and all dispensers for soap and paper should be easy to refill and quick to use. It’s also crucial that they are kept well stocked at all times.


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