It's all about the big picture: clinics as a healthcare environment
CLEAN HOSPITALS DAY on 20 October focuses on the entire environment of patients: above all, hygienic cleaning still offers potential for improvement.
After almost three years of the COVID-19 pandemic, it should be clear to everyone: prevention is an important factor for health protection, because infections that do not occur in the first place often save the need for complicated therapy. This is especially true for pathogens against which there are no effective drugs. And this is even more true in hospitals! Therefore, CLEAN HOSPITALS DAY on 20 October focuses on the entire environment of patients and campaigns for improved hospital hygiene.
Concept for the entire hospital environment
Hospital hygiene is an essential building block in the overall strategy to prevent nosocomial infections. These can best be combated with a multimodal overall concept that, in addition to the very important hand hygiene, also takes into account all other factors that have an influence on hygiene in healthcare facilities: for example, surface hygiene, air cleaning, waste disposal, or the reprocessing of medical devices. But uniform hygiene standards and evidence-based recommendations for action, including training for all staff, also play a role in such a concept.
"Proper cleaning is active protection against infections!"
For Dr Marco Krewing, Applied Scientist at the HARTMANN SCIENCE CENTER (HSC) and expert in surface disinfection, it is also essential to consider the hospital as a whole. Just like CLEAN HOSPITALS, he sees potential for improvement in the area of hospital cleaning: "We are already on the right track when it comes to hand cleaning and hand disinfection. In the meantime, this has become well understood and it is done frequently and well. However, surface disinfection is still neglected. The health risk posed by poor surface hygiene - just think of the monkeypox virus at the moment - should not be underestimated. In this case and with many other pathogens, the following applies: Proper cleaning is active protection against infections!
International initiative: CLEAN HOSPITALS
The international initiative CLEAN HOSPITALS was founded in 2018. Partners from science, industry, non-governmental organisations, and government agencies work together in it. The aim is to increase hygiene in the hospital environment and improve the visibility of the hospital environment in patient care. CLEAN HOSPITALS is an independent source of information for both hygiene professionals and the general public. The initiative conducts research on surface cleaning and develops training and certification programmes as well as evidence-based recommendations.
Clinical infection prevention as a mission
HARTMANN supports the CLEAN HOSPITALS initiative as a participating partner. As a leading manufacturer of products for hand and surface disinfection, skin care and skin antisepsis, we are fully committed to the goal of infection prevention. At CLEAN HOSPITALS, HARTMANN is involved in the “Mapping Guidelines” working group and works with partners to prepare position papers and recommendations for issues where existing guidelines are not clear. In the “Transposable Model” working group, we are working on the development of an analysis tool for hospital hygiene.
MISSION: INFECTION PREVENTION
“Our involvement in CLEAN HOSPITALS fits in perfectly with the rest of our activities”, says Dr Heide Niesalla, Director of the HARTMANN SCIENCE CENTER in Hamburg. “We conduct research in many areas to make hospitals a safer place for patients and healthcare professionals.” One of these other activities, for example, is MISSION: INFECTION PREVENTION (M: IP®). Through this initiative, which we launched in September 2020, we are working with our customers to raise public awareness of clinical infection prevention. At the same time, we support healthcare facilities in optimising the work of healthcare professionals in terms of better infection prevention.
CLEAN HOSPITALS Initiative: Visit the website and learn more about the importance of hospitals as a healthcare environment: CLEAN HOSPITALS online
MISSION: INFECTION PREVENTION: Everything you need to know about our holistic approach to preventing nosocomial infections. Learn more!
Expert interview: 3 questions about CLEAN HOSPITALS to our expert; the complete interview with Dr Marco Krewing.
