Reports indicate that the majority of MRSA cases in the health care setting originate from patients who are already infected entering the facility. How can cleaners communicate/maintain the perception of clean while preventing the spread of MRSA and other similar bacteria?
Let me play devil's advocate here:
Why should they?
MRSA is not spread by the cleaning staff and in the majority of situations can not be contained by the cleaning staff. The cleaning staff does it job once, the areas, surfaces etc.. are then contaminated and re-contaminated over and over again by occupants/users before the cleaning staff appears again.
So, why should they be blamed? made to be the scapegoat for poor sanitary habits of doctors, nurses etc...?
Let's pick on the poor, uneducated custodian?
Hospitals, care centers, nursing homes, etc.. spend an exceptional amount of money on printed material outlining the fees, the rules, what is covered, what is not, what they will do, what they won't do to cover their butts against lawsuits but just once, shouldn't there be some kind of notice that says : "Wash your hands before leaving the restroom"?
Yeah, let's get the janitor.
Ken Galo
www.lk-clean.com
How many of the thousands of cleaning personel out there even know how to disinfect something such as a comode? Usually janitorial staff is on a tight schedule. Most of the disinfectants require a ten minute dwell time. Yet if you ever watch a cleaning staff person cleaning you will most likely notice that they spray it on and wipe it off. Just a thought to add to this topic.
Who cares about disinfecting a commode anyway. Nobody is touching it. Just do the handle.
It won’t be easy to say who is responsible for HCAI. First of all it’s important for everyone in healthcare setting doing proper hand washing or use hand sanitizer before/after contact with patient and surface. Other factor most of the time Environmental Service staff didn’t realized that disinfectant cleaner require 10 minutes contact time to ensure its complete disinfectant which mean surface must be wet for 10 minutes, but I don’t really see how that will work because of their limit time. Now there is new disinfectant in marketing that offer 5 minutes contact time and it can come from dilution system. Also there is other ready to use disinfectant cleaner that only need 60 second contact time which it made big difference.