Environmental Services

As healthcare workers know, pathogens can survive in the environment for significant periods of time. And if surfaces are not cleaned and disinfected appropriately, these pathogens can be passed on to patients and hospital staff and cause significant, potentially fatal, health complications.

If we look at the current state of environmental hygiene, what we need to ask ourselves is, Why is cleanliness still such a problem? In the past, hospitals have measured cleanliness using patient satisfaction survey responses. There are several pros and cons of this approach, though satisfaction surveys measure a patients impression of cleanliness, it does not objectively tell whether a surface is clean. This can be dangerous as a surface could look fine but be contaminated with infection-causing pathogens.