Environmental Services

Darrel Hicks: “EVS teams work around professionals who are certified—whether it’s respiratory therapists, physical therapists, the RNs, the doctors—and I think if we ever hoped to elevate their status that we need to certify environmental services workers to a certain level of knowledge before they even start cleaning patient rooms.”

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today’s highlights for the week ending October 29.

Compared to cases confirmed by human clinical testing, the air sampling used in the college dorms in the study had a success rate of 75%–100% in detecting infection by SARS-CoV-2.

Brian Flannigan: “The reason why water quality and water safety is so important in sterile processing is that there have been direct connections made between the water systems and hospital infections: operating room infections, asset life problems, maintenance problems, staining and discoloration of equipment.”

Even the most rigorous infection prevention protocols come unraveled if compliance isn’t maintained. The challenge is that for busy health care professionals, remembering when and how to disinfect is just one of many competing tasks in an extremely busy day.

The allocations are scheduled to begin next month, with initial awards totaling $885, of which $500 million will go to what the CDC calls “strike teams” that will focus on nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.

Investigators used acetone-washed, pre-autoclaved stainless-steel coupons coated with reformulated quaternary ammonium polymer to keep deadly pathogens at bay.

The pathogen can lurk on blankets, bed rails, trolley handles, sheets, door handles, light switches, bedside tables, bedside table drawers, curtains, sinks, food tables, curtains, normal saline stands.

The further away from an infected person you are, the less likely you are to contract the disease. But you are still not safe at 6 feet. The virus is airborne and can spread much further to the back of the classroom.

Despite the fact that the processes and layout of the laundry facility met industry standards, infection prevention teams found a significant number of mucormycosis-causing cultures.

In the new normal after COVID-19, infection preventionists will need to become more knowledgeable about and involved in the functionality of air ventilation in health care settings.

An integrated air management system requires proper engineering and not a pile-up approach of unproven products. One concern is that decision makers will fall into the nearsighted trap of selecting piecemeal products that require frequent maintenance.

Take 5 minutes to catch up on Infection Control Today®’s highlights for the week ending June 18.

Jody Feigel, RN, MSN: “A few years ago, nobody wanted to hear from infection prevention. Now, everybody wants to hear from infection prevention.”

One of the reasons that S aureus and C diff present such a disinfection challenge is that they are encased in a biofilms such as yeast, protozoa, bacteria, fungi, and algae.

Ultraviolet-C light makes benzalkonium chloride, which is found in many disinfectants, safer to use.

Between the trifecta of departments responsible for infection prevention—EVS, nursing and infection prevention—it’s every individual’s responsibility to ensure surface cleaning and disinfecting are done quickly and effectively.

MIT professors argue that many variables should be included when determining just how much social distancing is needed in different indoor settings.

The risk of COVID-19 surface transmission is low, says the CDC, and is especially low outdoors.

Ultraviolet light should be used in concert with traditional cleaning and disinfection procedures utilized by environmental services teams, study’s author maintains.

Emilie Bédard, PhD: “We worked in collaboration with infection prevention, environmental services…. We had a multi-disciplinary team to make sure that we would look at all aspects of this approach.”

The multidisciplinary team included NICU nurses, physicians, nurse practitioners and, perhaps most important of all, environmental services personnel. “We met with the environmental services staff, and we explained to them that this is a critical situation in the neonatal ICU. And this cannot spread more.”

It is my advice that building managers seriously consider these measures, many of which are low cost and generate universal prevention measures.

Evidence shows that bacteria on floors can be resuspended into the air with a potential of inhalation, swallowing, or contamination of surfaces and hands.

Sharon Ward-Fore, MS, MT(ASCP), CIC: "We’ve learned the hard way that restaurants, office settings, hair salons, fitness centers, and schools have really suffered for the lack of guidance by professionals like infection preventionists."

Difficulties in communicating with the elderly necessitate close speaking. These circumstances are a ripe atmosphere for spreading respiratory diseases. While residents were largely isolated from the broader population, their caretakers were not.

In response to COVID-19, companies manufacture robots that would complement the cleaning and disinfection work done by environmental services teams in hospitals. Might the machines also one day take their jobs?

“Infection control measures, including surveillance, education, cleaning/disinfection, patient cohorting, isolation, and hand hygiene, effectively contained the outbreak; it was declared over within 2 months.”

Beware the loophole. Many clinics are often classified as office space, not health care buildings, so they do not have adhered to ventilation standards.

Many members of environmental service teams feel underappreciated and these health care professionals are not trained in any systematic and continuous way, a study states.