INFECTION CONTROL
Walls can be a key barrier to infection transmission
While their specification in the construction of new healthcare facilities, or the refurbishment or upgrading of existing such buildings, may not always grab the limelight, large surfaces like walls and doors can provide microbes with the perfect environment for colonisation. In this article, Alan Gibson, Business developer at Röchling Industrial, discusses how walls can, in fact, help medical staff maintain high hygiene standards, and support the safe treatment of patients.
Left – before: an operating theatre with a tiled wallcovering. Right – after: the operating theatre fitted with a Röchling Industrial wallcovering incorporating silver ion technology designed to prevent bacteria on the surface from continuing to multiply.
It is not just since the start of the coronavirus pandemic that infection control personnel have focused considerable work and efforts on establishing and maintaining a stringent and comprehensive hygiene management and infection control regime. All the steps and measures implemented aim to prevent infection through codes of practice and ways of working for medical staff, and thorough cleaning programmes for the correct disinfection of medical instruments. Of course how often medical personnel come into contact with particular instruments, and indeed with patients, varies with every clinical scenario, and in the many different clinical spaces within a hospital or other healthcare facility. In comparison, walls might – at first sight – appear a very passive element from an infection control standpoint. However, in reality, large surfaces like walls, doors, and ceilings provide microbes with the perfect environment for colonisation, and are potentially a constant factor in the transmission of microbes.
Both medical staff and patients will make contact with walls unintentionally, and touch doors in the same location, and patients, especially, may not always be aware of this less obvious means of infection transmission. Against this
50 Health Estate Journal May 2021
backdrop, large surfaces such as walls in medical facilities are of considerable importance in terms of compliance with strict hygiene regimes, and, of course, take a great deal of time and effort to keep clean, with joins in tiled walls a particular concern.
Giving walls a more active role With walls and wall surfacing materials designed with infection control strongly in mind able to make a major contribution to preventing bacteria from continuing to multiply, we at Röchling Industrial set about re-addressing how such extensive surfaces in medical facilities are perceived, and giving them a far more active role. This led us to develop a wall sheet called TroBloc M, which has a functional side incorporating silver ion technology that prevents many bacteria on the surface from continuing to multiply. The silver ions inhibit the reproduction of many strains of bacteria, and reduce the risk of transmission. The effectiveness of the technology has, for example, been proven against MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) in tests undertaken by a number of external laboratories.
Professional cleaning of large surfaces is time-consuming, and thus costly. The surface of the Röchling Industrial wall sheets is highly hydrophobic, which helps to make cleaning even large surfaces quick and easy.
As decisions about investment in walls and doors are often made during the initial design and construction of buildings, or during renovation, choices need to be carefully considered for many reasons. We have spent many years undertaking research to develop wall sheets that meets medical facilities’ varied demands; while antimicrobial properties are clearly key, there are a number of other important criteria for such products to meet. Let us now look at these.
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