Environmental Services

The Association for the Healthcare Environment (AHE), of the American Hospital Association (AHA), and Kimberly-Clark announced today the first recipients of the Heart of Healthcare Awards, honoring outstanding frontline environmental services professionals who make a difference for patients and long-term care and assisted living residents. The award is part of the Heart of Healthcare campaign developed by AHE and Kimberly-Clark Professional, which recognizes and elevates the critical role that frontline environmental services technicians play in the healthcare environment.

There has been a lot of chatter about standards of practice for cleaning and surface disinfection or the perceived lack thereof. Evidence- based best practices in environmental services do in fact exist. However, willingness outside of environmental services to accept them has been less than stellar. Environmental services (EVS) professionals are not scientists nor trained researchers, but they can tell you whether your data can be practically implemented. The bottom line is there are so many conflicting views on everything from disinfecting floors to whether or not infection can be traced back to environmental surfaces, that we are just short of turf wars.

Earlier this year, the annual meeting of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) brought together thousands of infection preventionists, nurses, vendors and other professionals seriously interested in learning how to be more effective in their commitment to reduce preventable HAIs and ensure a safe patient environment. People came from many countries to learn about the latest research presented by healthcare leaders and a number of world-renowned experts dedicated to infection prevention.

A renewed interest in the healthcare environment and to what degree surface contamination contributes to the spread of infectious pathogens is driving a growing body of research in this area. Let's take a look at what we know about various aspects of environmental hygiene from the scientific literature.

Infection Control Today invited industry members to share mini case studies that reflect real-world situations in which evidence-based strategies were used to address environmental cleaning challenges.