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OR HYGIENE
• Disinfection monitoring. Dr. Munoz-Price questions whether it's economically practical to retrofit your facility with such solutions if your staff still has
room for improvement in hand hygiene compliance and proper disinfection
product use. She led a study in the September 2012 Infection Control and
Hospital Epidemiology demonstrating the positive impact of feedback on OR
cleaning.
Ann Marie Pettis, RN, BSN, CIC, director of infection prevention at the
University of Rochester (N.Y.) Medical Center, agrees. She monitors the thoroughness of surface disinfection with electronic technology. Swab a surface
after cleaning and slide the swab into a handheld meter, which calculates
the amount of adenosine tri-phosphate (ATP) — a compound found in all
organic matter — on the swab. Displayed as a number, the result indicates
how much bioload remains on the surface.
Another option involves applying a transparent fluorescent gel to surfaces
before cleaning, then viewing the surfaces afterward under ultraviolet light
to see if it's still there. It's a less expensive option, but requires a bit more
effort, says Ms. Pettis, and a qualitative solution as opposed to the ATP reader's quantitative results.
Either way, she says, such disinfection monitoring "lends itself to competition. It can be used non-punitively, not to single-out negatively, but to train
positively," and ultimately to build a bridge between infection preventionists
and the housekeeping or nurse-and-tech crews on whom clean environments depend.
— David Bernard
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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | D E C E M B E R 2013
