The vital healthcare ingredient

During the global pandemic it has become more important than ever to keep hospitals clean and germ-free. Liam Mynes from Tork manufacturer Essity considers the importance of training in ensuring these outcomes.

CLEANING and hand hygiene are vital in any healthcare setting. Cleaning operatives have a duty of care to keep the floors and surfaces sanitised, while medical staff need to ensure that their hands remain clean and virus-free to avoid the risk of cross-contamination. But while hand hygiene and surface cleaning are both relatively straightforward tasks, many healthcare workers are still getting them wrong.

Staff members can all too easily miss an important step in the process - particularly if they have received inadequate training or are in a hurry to move on to the next job. Not every medical worker will be washing their hands frequently enough or in the right way, for example. And overstretched cleaning operatives might inadvertently neglect some hospital surfaces or use the same cleaning cloth for multiple applications, a practice that could lead to cross-contamination.

The cleaning team is at the sharp end of hospital hygiene and it is their responsibility to ensure that all surfaces are kept sanitised and germ-free. But hospital cleaning operatives need few qualifications for their role. According to the NHS website, domestic service assistants merely need to be physically fit, capable of following instructions and able to work unsupervised. They must also be able to pay attention to detail, work as part of a team and take responsibility for their own work.

They are trained on the job and are encouraged to work towards a qualification, such as an NVQ in cleaning. But it is all too easy for standards to slip during a busy cleaning shift, just as it is entirely possible for a hard-pressed healthcare worker to forget to wash his or her thumbs or the backs of their hands during a routine hand wash.

The advice from the World Health Organisation is that healthcare staff should wash their hands before touching a patient, before carrying out any aseptic procedure and after exposure to body fluids. Hand washing should also take place after touching a patient or coming into contact with a patient’s surroundings. And the whole washing and drying process should take between 40 and 60 seconds to ensure a thorough cleanse. According to the WHO’s Clean Hands 2020 campaign, however, around 70% of

healthcare workers globally fail to practise hand hygiene on a regular basis. Healthcare staff and hospital cleaning operatives therefore need to fully understand the protocols of cleaning and hand hygiene. And they also need to be aware of what they are doing and why. This is why training is so vital in a hospital - both for hand hygiene and surface cleaning.

Cleaning operatives should be taught how to sanitise all patient areas in the most logical and hygienic way possible. They should understand the order in which surfaces should be cleaned plus the importance of using different cloths for each task to avoid cross-contamination. And all training should be easy to understand, intuitive and take into account the fact that English may not be their first language.

Essity has now launched an interactive training and support package aimed at healthcare cleaning operatives and facility managers. Tork Interactive Clean Hospital Training takes staff through various realworld cleaning scenarios in an engaging way. The training takes place in a virtual hospital and incorporates modules on daily cleaning in occupied patient rooms plus discharge cleaning protocols. Each module is focused on learning by doing and is available in more than 15 languages besides English. And an accompanying ‘train-the-trainer’ module instructs facility and contract cleaning managers on how to support their teams and demonstrate optimum cleaning techniques.

Hand hygiene, like cleaning, can also be taught. In fact, studies show that healthcare staff would actually like more instruction in this field.

A recent study carried out by United Minds on behalf of Essity revealed that 80% of healthcare professionals wanted to improve their hand hygiene compliance but added that they found most traditional training modules uninspiring. Around 60% of the 1000-plus staff members polled said they would also like hand hygiene to be given a higher priority in their unit. A total of 98% considered hand hygiene to be a very important element of their daily work while 40% called for better hand hygiene training. And a third of all workers expressed dissatisfaction with the current levels of training on offer.

At Essity we have now broadened the scope of our hand hygiene training and made Tork Clean Hands Training - previously only available with the use of a virtual reality headset - accessible free of charge online via any electronic device. The training invites users into a digital world where they are confronted with a series of scenarios where hand hygiene needs to be carried out. Developed in collaboration with behavioural scientists and hand hygiene experts, the course aims to provide hand hygiene guidance in an engaging way.

The use of posters and stickers reminding healthcare staff to wash their hands and providing instructions on how to do this will help to support their efforts. And of course, it is important that they are supplied with user-friendly products to be able to comfortably wash and dry their hands. Frequent and thorough hand washing is essential for healthcare workers, but skin irritations and dermatitis are both associated with repeated washing and drying. This means that all soaps and hand towels should be soft and skin-friendly. For example, Tork Extra Mild Foam Soap is allergy friendly and certified by the European Centre for Allergy Research Foundation, while Tork Xpress Extra Soft Multifold Hand Towels are soft, absorbent and gentle on the skin. A fragrance-free conditioning cream such as Tork Non-perfumed Hand & Body Lotion will help to prevent chapping and soreness when used after hand washing.

Cleaning operatives should also be equipped with user-friendly products that facilitate their task. Products such as Tork Microfibre Reusable Cleaning Cloths and Tork Microfibre Disposable Cleaning Cloths can help to promote a safer

and cleaner healthcare environment because both cloths are designed to pick up and retain any particles from the cleaning surface.

Healthcare workers are only human, and there will be occasions when the pressures of work, the condition of their skin, the unavailability of products, or simple forgetfulness will result in a lapse in hand hygiene or cleaning protocols. So it is vital that the message is constantly reinforced with training and that user-friendly hand hygiene systems and effective cleaning products are always made available to hospital staff.

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