Ms. Sara Peterson1
1The Royal Melbourne Hospital, Parkville, Australia
Biography:
Sara Peterson is a Clinical Nurse Consultant in the Infection Prevention and Surveillance Service at the Royal Melbourne Hospital, Victoria. She has an interest in how health data can enhance clinical practices and behaviours.
Abstract:
The Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH) environmental services team handles numerous discharge cleans daily, including infectious cleans for patients isolated under transmission-based precautions. These cleans are physically demanding and time-consuming. Therefore, the RMH Infection Prevention department reviewed the appropriateness of infectious discharge clean requests.
RMH has implemented digital health solutions to enhance environmental cleaning and general maintenance requests. These solutions revolutionise cleaning practices, enabling tasks such as ordering required or ad hoc cleans, gathering patient feedback on cleanliness, and conducting audits electronically.
Digital health solutions streamline healthcare systems, improving real-time operations. Digitising cleaning ensures adequate staffing, sufficient task completion time, and efficient auditing to identify and address gaps promptly. Electronic cleaning requests track the acceptance and completion time of cleaning jobs and the types of cleans requested, providing clear visibility into the effectiveness and responsiveness of the cleaning program.
Using electronic cleaning requests and a retrospective chart review, healthcare workers' discharge cleaning requests were correlated with Infection Prevention records.
The review revealed that while most requests were appropriate, some departments consistently requested incorrect cleans. This finding has led to targeted education sessions which involved educating staff regarding transmissible organisms, modes of transmission, and correct cleaning procedures, also how to find useful resources. This has ensured the ongoing appropriate use of cleaning resources.
Cleaning is crucial for breaking the chain of infection and reducing healthcare-associated infections. Digital solutions are providing greater oversight, support for the cleaning workforce, and facilitating timely education to ensure correct cleaning practices are followed.