Environmental Services
The Infection Control Today® environmental services (EVS) page recognizes the team responsible for sanitation and cleaning within the health care system. EVS personnel are an integral component of infection prevention in the hospital, working closely together with the health care staff to ensure patient safety and hygiene standards. ICT® keeps a close eye on developments in the environmental services industry and reports on any peer-reviewed literature. This page also features video interviews with EVS and the professionals who interact with them.
Latest News
June 17th 2025
A hospital-wide quality improvement project has transformed how staff access critical manufacturer instructions for use (IFUs), improving infection prevention compliance and saving time through a standardized, user-friendly digital system supported by unit-based training and interdepartmental collaboration.
More News
Reusable Medical Device Disinfection and Cleaning Validation Requirements
May 10th 2011Reusable medical devices come in all shapes and sizes, from specula to colonoscopes. Generally, these devices have expensive compo-nents that require them to be cleaned and disinfected or sterilized. This article describes the salient points for validating that a medical device can be safely reused. It covers disinfection processes, not sterilization. The cleaning validation information contained within is germane to all reusable medical devices.
Environmental Services and Fighting Healthcare-Associated Infections
April 14th 2011One good housekeeper can prevent more diseases than a dozen doctors can cure. Some patients are so ill that a healthcare-associated infection (HAI) can take a patients life, even if there were a room full of doctors to provide treatment. Just as medical personnel care for patients, environmental services (ES) professionals work to keep hospitals healthy. This article is a nuts-and-bolts piece meant to improve the health of healthcare facilities. There are a few basic things we need to do to make ES departments effective -- proper hiring and training of staff, adequate design of ES work areas, accurate appraisal of task loads, and concise time management of the frontline staff.
