Environmental Services

This Pulse addresses cleaning and disinfection best practices in a variety of specific healthcare settings including the patient room, emergency department, operating room and intensive care unit. Some experts believe that in terms of cleaning, a hospital should not be considered a single entity, and that different patient-care areas should be treated as separate environments, and cleaning protocols should be adjusted accordingly.

Researchers at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences have devised a bedbug trap that can be built with household items. All you need are two disposable plastic containers, masking tape and glue, says Phil Koehler, UF/IFAS urban entomology professor. The traps catch and collect the bugs when they try to travel between people and the places where bedbugs hide, he adds.

Experts are pushing for a surgical conscience in the operating room that also encompasses a heightened awareness of intraoperative transmission of potentially pathogenic organisms and a comprehensive environmental hygiene program in which both processes and outcomes issues related to the role of the operating room environment in pathogen transmission are monitored and measured. While the role of the environment continues to be an imperative, renewed focus is being placed on the operating theater's obligation to control and prevention infections.