We’re just back from the Association for Professionals in Infection Control (APIC) conference in Ft. Lauderdale, and we read with interest a poster called Hospital Privacy Curtains: Cleaning and Changing Policies – Are We Doing Enough? presented there. Spoiler alert: the answer is no.
The investigators surveyed 49 infection control professionals in six states about privacy curtain management in standard patient rooms and ambulatory care rooms. They found that:
- 96% use privacy curtains in patient rooms
- 55% had a written policy on the frequency of cleaning privacy curtains
- 53% had a written policy on the frequency of changing privacy curtains
- 37% clean privacy curtains in a standard hospital room ‘only when visibly soiled’
- 13% clean privacy curtains in a standard hospital room ‘every month’
- 13% clean privacy curtains in a standard hospital room ‘every 3 months’
- 13% clean privacy curtains in a standard hospital room ‘once per year’
- 39% responded ‘Other’ to the question of how frequently they clean privacy curtains
- Curtains were most often changed or cleaned when a patient had been discharged from an isolation room for a multi-drug resistant organism
- 82% of respondents felt that hospital curtains are a potential source of transmission of healthcare associated infections
- 86% felt that management of hospital curtains could be improved
We’re not surprised at these results. They are yet one more confirmation that the issue of soft surface contamination is not being sufficiently addressed. We hope some APIC attendees and other infection control professionals will view the poster and make some of the improvements in how privacy curtains are handled. We look forward to better results in future surveys.
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Clostridium difficile (C. diff) is a serious healthcare acquired infection often carried by those who don’t present any symptoms.
Infection control is a complex endeavor. As we’ve mentioned in this column many times before, successful healthcare-associated infection control requires a multifaceted approach: hand hygiene, environmental services, antimicrobial hard and soft surfaces, basic best surgical and instrument-handling practices and more. That’s why it’s so surprising to most Americans that reusing syringes or drawing multiple doses from single-use vials of medications in healthcare settings is still a problem.
It’s no secret that the canine sense of smell is much more sensitive than our own. Now researchers in the Netherlands have shown how that sensitivity can be applied to identification and diagnosis of Clostridium difficile with remarkable accuracy. More importantly, implementing a canine-based monitoring system for early detection could help control the spread of the infection.
Why do we so frequently use the term “multifaceted approach” when we talk about what’s required to address the problem of healthcare associated infections (HAIs)? Here’s one reason: hand hygiene is widely acknowledged as an essential element of any HAI control program, and hand hygiene compliance rates vary widely among medical personnel, let alone hospital visitors.
If scrubs are carrying harmful bacteria, then at least the perception, if not the reality, that uniforms are spreading infection would make it inadvisable to wear scrubs outside the facility, especially in sandwich shops and produce markets. Even with the best staff intentions, home laundering water temperatures are sometimes inadequate to eliminate resistant bacteria. The heat of ironing would help, but compliance with simply washing uniforms is uneven at best.
Long-term care facilities have some unique characteristics that require special attention above and beyond standard hospital-grade infection control protocols. We can consider the appropriate prevention and control actions in the context of common infection transmission routes: