Don’t let the ones you can’t see get away. Maintaining consistency with environmental cleaning.

Mrs Michelle Bolte¹, Ms Elaine Hall¹, Mr  Michael Ryan¹

¹Tamworth Rural Referral Hospital, Tamworth, Australia

Recent evidence has shown that the Hospital environment plays an important role in health care associated infections. High touch areas (frequently touched by patients and health care workers) provide a reservoir for transmission of pathogens directly through the health care workers hands and/or from the patient touching contaminated surfaces. Hospital environmental cleaning is important for reducing microbial contamination, colonisation of surfaces and reduces the risk of health care associated infections.

During observational audits within a rehabilitation ward in a rural hospital it was observed that staff who were cleaning beds on discharge did not have a consistent cleaning method. It was noticed that not all parts of the bed were cleaned the same way and on occasions high touch points were missed. The rehabilitation ward consists of 22 beds with a mix of patients who have varying stable medical conditions and may also be colonised with a multi-resistant organism. The patients are often requiring admission for long periods. The Infection Prevention nurses have been trialling the use of Clinell wipes (Universal detergent and disinfectant wipes) with bed cleaning to determine how many wipes are needed to clean each component of the bed. With an aim to improve consistent practice in cleaning, a poster is to be created to provide guidance for all hospital staff members displaying a step by step procedure.  A pre and post survey to measure staff knowledge of cleaning is to conducted over 4 weeks, pre-poster release and post poster release to evaluate this quality improvement project.

Biography:

Michelle Bolte, CNC. Dip Applied Science, Grad Dip Science- Infection Control.

Michelle has 30 year of nursing experience in varying fields during her career. She has had extensive experience in acute care surgical and primary health care with 15 years working in remote rural settings .

Her publications have focused on preventing wound infections for women having caesarean sections .

During the past 2 years Michelle has implemented a hospital wide infection prevention link nurse program in to her facility. She mentors nurses throughout the hospital and aims to educate and support nurses to lead projects.