Cleaning staff at Sun Country Health Region facilities are employing new methods to ensure that health facilities get a thorough and stringent cleaning, in an effort to minimize infections in health care facilities, trustees were told at the Sun Country board meeting on Wednesday.
Debra Button, regional manager of environment services for Sun Country, along with two staff members, Karly Herberholz Hagel and Michelle Luscombe, did a demonstration with glow glitter and UV flashlights to show how facilities are tested, and some facts on infection rates and types were shared with the trustees.
Button had each trustee and manager put an X on the table in front of them with the glow glitter, and had them use a UV flashlight to illuminate them to show how it’s invisible under normal lighting. She explained that to test how thorough the cleaning is done, an X is placed on strategic places in patients room and bathrooms, and after the cleaning crew goes through, the flashlight is used to see if the Xs were removed by the cleaning, noting that it takes a thorough scrubbing in order to remove the material.
The standard for cleaning a patient’s room is 95 per cent of all areas thoroughly cleaned, and each cleaning team is audited once a month for how well the cleaning is carried out, said Button. Currently, after district-wide audits were carried out, the level of cleaning is about 88.9 per cent for the region overall.
“As a staff member, this should be a self-assessment tool,” said Button. “There has been some comments that this is a performance-based assessment, and it’s not. … They’re non-disciplinary and are a tool to see how thorough we’re being.”
The goal is to have the level of auditing facilities at a standardized level, so the same standards of cleaning is maintained at all facilities, she added.
The two staff members with Button explained the importance of thorough cleaning, as the goal is to eliminate incidents of catching infectious diseases, particularly in rooms where patients have been isolated due to the type of infections they had.
The stringent environmental cleaning is part of the lines of defence against infections, along with vaccines and additional precautions, such as requiring staff and visitors to wear masks, gloves and gowns.
Listing some of the more virulent diseases, such as norovirus and those causing influenza and related illnesses, Herberholz Hagel noted that norovirus can last anywhere from eight hours to seven days on a surface in a room where a patient had had the infection. The stringent cleaning is to prevent outbreaks of infections such as these, some of which can lead to the deaths of patients.
To prevent outbreaks, a high-touch audit was developed, using the methods as described by Button to remove as much of the infections from each room as possible, along with education sessions for staff on how to use the glow glitter, and the proper steps to take in cleaning rooms. Audits were carried at facilities without forewarning them that their areas would be scrutinized.
In 2014, there were nine influenza outbreaks across Sun Country and three deaths were recorded. In 2015, there were four influenza cases and no deaths occurred, while in 2017 so far, there have been five influenza outbreaks and two deaths have been reported.
This year’s influenza season has begun, and vaccinations for influenza will begin on Monday, Oct. 23 in the Sun Country Health Region.
