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.
September 13th 2024
Sean Brown’s 2024 Disease Prevention Summit presentation emphasized leveraging technology, prioritizing high-risk patients, and environmental surveillance to enhance infection prevention and control strategies.
Hypochlorous Acid for Definitive Terminal Cleaning of the Hospital Environment
June 9th 2014Standard terminal cleaning of hospital rooms is a fundamental Infection Prevention process performed by the Environment of Care staff. It is defined as physical cleaning followed by disinfection with an approved hospital disinfectant. Monitoring consistency of this process, however,is difficult and not assured. There can be as many variations of the process as there is staff performing the task. It is not unusual that significant residual bacteria are left in place.Alternative disinfection technology utilizing a product derived from saline and electricity, "superoxidized water," produces a cidal activity 50-100 times that of household bleach, addressing growing resistance issues of standard terminal cleaning agents. Electrolyzed sodium hypochlorous acid (HOCL), produces an efficient disinfecting adjunct to standard terminal cleaning and provides many advantages in optimizing infection prevention in the hospital environment. The wand spray device distributes the product in a sequential back and forth motion producing a uniform distribution of the powder coating to all areas of the environment. Due to the neutral pH of the HOCL, it is non-toxic, does not leave residue on environmental surfaces, and is not corrosive to hospital equipment as traditional bleach and phenolics have long demonstrated.
Setting-Specific Cleaning and Disinfection
May 28th 2014This Pulse addresses cleaning and disinfection best practices in a variety of specific healthcare settings including the patient room, emergency department, operating room and intensive care unit. Some experts believe that in terms of cleaning, a hospital should not be considered a single entity, and that different patient-care areas should be treated as separate environments, and cleaning protocols should be adjusted accordingly.
A Better Bed Bug Trap Made From Household Items for About $1
May 20th 2014Researchers at the University of Florida’s Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences have devised a bedbug trap that can be built with household items. All you need are two disposable plastic containers, masking tape and glue, says Phil Koehler, UF/IFAS urban entomology professor. The traps catch and collect the bugs when they try to travel between people and the places where bedbugs hide, he adds.
Updated Environmental Cleaning RP Addresses OR Imperatives
April 14th 2014Experts are pushing for a surgical conscience in the operating room that also encompasses a heightened awareness of intraoperative transmission of potentially pathogenic organisms and a comprehensive environmental hygiene program in which both processes and outcomes issues related to the role of the operating room environment in pathogen transmission are monitored and measured. While the role of the environment continues to be an imperative, renewed focus is being placed on the operating theater's obligation to control and prevention infections.