Environmental Services

Standard terminal cleaning of hospital rooms is a fundamental Infection Prevention process performed by the Environment of Care staff. It is defined as physical cleaning followed by disinfection with an approved hospital disinfectant. Monitoring consistency of this process, however,is difficult and not assured. There can be as many variations of the process as there is staff performing the task. It is not unusual that significant residual bacteria are left in place.Alternative disinfection technology utilizing a product derived from saline and electricity, "superoxidized water," produces a cidal activity 50-100 times that of household bleach, addressing growing resistance issues of standard terminal cleaning agents. Electrolyzed sodium hypochlorous acid (HOCL), produces an efficient disinfecting adjunct to standard terminal cleaning and provides many advantages in optimizing infection prevention in the hospital environment. The wand spray device distributes the product in a sequential back and forth motion producing a uniform distribution of the powder coating to all areas of the environment. Due to the neutral pH of the HOCL, it is non-toxic, does not leave residue on environmental surfaces, and is not corrosive to hospital equipment as traditional bleach and phenolics have long demonstrated.

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.