Impact of Educational Intervention on Cleaning and Disinfection of an Emergency Unit

Abstract

We aimed to evaluate the impact of an educational intervention on the surface cleaning and disinfection of an emergency room. This is an interventional, prospective, longitudinal, analytical and comparative study. Data collection consisted of three stages (Stage 1—baseline, Stage 2—intervention and immediate assessment, Stage 3—long term assessment). For the statistical analysis, we used a significance level of α = 0.05. The Wilcoxon and the Mann–Whitney test tests were applied. We performed 192 assessments in each stage totaling 576 evaluations. Considering the ATP method, the percentage of approval increased after the educational intervention, as the approval rate for ATP was 25% (Stage 1), immediately after the intervention it went to 100% of the approval (Stage 2), and in the long run, 75% of the areas have been fully approved. Stage 1 showed the existence of significant differences between the relative light units (RLU) scores on only two surfaces assessed: dressing cart (p = 0.021) and women’s toilet flush handle (p = 0.014); Stage 2 presented three results with significant differences for ATP: dressing cart (p = 0.014), women’s restroom door handle (p = 0.014) and women’s toilet flush handle (p = 0.014); in step III, there was no significant difference for the ATP method. Therefore, conclusively, the educational intervention had a positive result in the short term for ATP; however, the same rates are not observed with the colony-forming units (CFU), due to their high sensitivity and the visual inspection method since four surfaces had defects in their structure.

Hospital cleaning

“…Management of the hospital face the problem of missing some sites in routine cleaning schedules due to divided responsibility between the cleaning staff and nurses 46,47 . If the workload of the cleaning staff and nurses is too high it may hinder the efficacy of cleaning and cause the uncleaning of some important hospital sites 48 . Cleaning staff should be well educated about the microbiological principles and trained to maintain and disinfect the cleaning equipment, to frequently change the water in the bucket, to Belojevic G. Annals of Nursing 2022; 1 (1): 7-23 keep it clean or to change the wipes when moving from cleaning toilets to cleaning near-patient sites 45 .…”

Avaliação comparativa de quaternário de amônia mais biguanida e peróxido de hidrogênio na desinfecção de superfícies hospitalares

“…No entanto, devido à acessibilidade de vários produtos desinfetantes e as diferentes marcas, a escolha de um produto tornou-se um desafio para especialistas em saúde ambiental e para os supervisores de controle de infecção nos serviços de saúde. A escolha dos desinfetantes de acordo com as instruções do fabricante não só não é confiável, mas também podem causar danos irreversíveis aos instrumentos e desencadear resistência a estes produtos 50,51…”