A Specialist’s Perspective on Clean Hospitals: Insights From Andreea Capilna, MD, PhD

Celebrating Clean Hospitals Day annually on October 20 has become a month-long celebration of remembering how important environmental hygiene is for hospitals. In this insightful interview, Andreea Capilna, MD, PhD, an Infectious Diseases specialist at Regina Maria Military Hospital Brașov, Romania, shares her involvement with the Clean Hospitals initiative. Capilna discusses her journey into infection prevention and control (IPC) and how Clean Hospitals plays a crucial role in maintaining hygiene in health care facilities. She also provides a comparative analysis of infection control protocols in Romania versus other European countries, along with her thoughts on team collaboration, especially highlighting the often-overlooked role of cleaning personnel in patient care.

ICT: How are you involved with Clean Hospitals? How did you get involved, and what is your position?

Andreea Capilna, MD, PhD: I met Professor [Didier] Pittet (PhD) many years ago in Geneva [Switzerland]. I also met Alexandra Peters, [PhD] in Geneva many years ago. They launched this initiative in 2017, I guess, when I participated in some of their meetings, I was more than honored and very curious to see the topics and discussions during these meetings. I was very impressed because they started to discuss about cleanliness and clean hospitals, which was a very basic idea, but I realized at that moment that it was one of the most important issues and topics to apply in the activity of the hospitals. And I realized at that time that [making sure we have] clean hospitals is one of the major problems, and it's one of the major challenges for us as professionals in infection prevention and control. And I'm very happy for this [initiative].

I met again, Professor Pittet and Alexandra some years after the first meeting, and I participated in the promotion of Clean Hospitals during some of the international events in this field of infection prevention and control (IPC). And I was more than honored to be part of the first train the trainers’ session in Malaysia in January this year, and after that, in Geneva, trying to highlight the importance of the good cleaning of the hospitals, and mainly the importance of training of the personnel or form the cleaning In the hospital

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ICT: You are an infectious disease doctor. What exactly do you do, and how does your work coincide with Clean Hospitals?

I'm an infectious disease doctor, but I'm also a specialist in IPC. I came to this team mainly as a person with experience and expertise in the prevention and control of infections in low—and middle-income countries. It's very important to know how to act, how to train people, and how to clean hospitals in countries where resources are not unlimited and where we have to be very cautious about the use and availability of this product.

ICT: How are infectious disease prevention and the protocols that are used in Romania? How do they differ from other countries across Europe?

We are very much aligned to the national and the international guidelines, and we are following the European and also the American guidelines. So, in theory, we are very well prepared, and hopefully, during the last year, we will also have legislation that supports the availability and applicability of these guidelines. We still have to work a lot on compliance and on understanding the importance of applying cleaning and hygiene measures. And I think that the signs of communism, where we lived for so many years, are sometimes still among us.

ICT: I understand. So how will you and perhaps your hospital, your facility, celebrate Clean Hospitals Day?

I just want to tell you how we celebrated last year because we tried to offer to the cleaning personnel, some presents, just showing them their importance and showing them our gratitude for their involvement in the healing process of the patients because they are together with the nurses, with the doctors, with all the health care professionals. It was a very emotional and beautiful moment because they realized they were very important to us.

This year, we are trying to do something similar, but we will evolve apart from the cleaning personnel, also the nurses because their activity is so close to the patients, and so much involved in caring and taking or curing the patients is very important for us, and we just want to highlight that we are a team that we cannot work one without the others, and it's very important to be there in the same time with a lot of responsibility and compliance in applying the good medical practices rules.

ICT: What message do you want to give Infection Control Today's readers and listeners about Clean Hospitals?

I would like to say that everybody's work is very important in the good functioning of the hospitals, all the personnel or the medical or the caring personnel. It's very important there, and we have to act as a team and we have to support each other because we are there to help patients and to give the best quality of medical care. And I just want to say that I realized during these last years, even if I'm a doctor in [infectious disease] and IPC, that it's very important to have Clean Hospitals and to apply all the rules regarding the air, the water, the laundry, the waste management and so on because all these small details can change dramatically the evolution and the care of the patients.

ICT: Do you have anything else you would like to add?

Yes, I would like to add that hand hygiene and clean hospitals are 2 important initiatives, and applying the good medical practices rule, rules coming from this concept can change and can improve dramatically the outcome of our patients.