The Heightened Importance of Cleanliness for Patient Safety

According to the World Health Organization, it is estimated one in every 10 patients is harmed while receiving hospital care caused by a range of adverse events, with nearly 50 percent of them preventable.¹ Regrettably, deficiency in cleanliness is one of the leading causes of adverse events, most notably healthcare-associated infections (HAIs). For instance, the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion reports that at any given time, about one in 25 patients has an infection related to hospital care, leading to tens of thousands of deaths and costing billions of dollars each year.² 

Indeed, environmental cleaning is critical to the health and safety of patients, as well as staff. And, without strict cleaning standards in place, pathogens can be hard to overcome and result in deadly outbreaks. In our article “Cleanliness Guidelines for Healthcare Settings” (p.18), we outline the types of standard operating procedures needed, including training, monitoring, feedback and safe handling instructions. And, we emphasize the importance of focused leadership since responsibility for patient and staff safety relies on adequately planning and executing the expected standard of care. 

For the last several years, sepsis has been recognized as a growing HAI that occurs in at least 1.7 million hospitalized adults in the U.S. annually, resulting in 270,000 deaths. As we explain in our article “Tackling Sepsis in Hospitals” (p.26), sepsis is an extreme response to infections caused by many different types of pathogens, and it can be very difficult to recognize and diagnose. We take a look at the successful types of awareness and education campaigns, protocols and state-of-the-art tools healthcare organizations in the U.S. have developed to lower the risk and incidence of sepsis, as well as the number of deaths. 

In today’s environment, there is a new addition to the list of HAIs: the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19, another highly infectious pathogen that not only can be transmitted through person-to-person contact, but can remain on surfaces for up to 72 hours. That’s why, as we discuss in our article “What’s New in Antiviral/Antibacterial Disinfectants?” (p.22), we point out a growing need to produce more protective disinfectants. And, while this is true for all classifications (critical, semicritical and noncritical) of medical equipment and devices, items that fall under the noncritical classification are most vulnerable because they are often overlooked, and staff charged with cleaning them are typically unsupervised. Fortunately, researchers are investigating new products that will last longer and provide greater protection, and some of them are currently on the market.

As always, we hope you enjoy this issue of BioSupply Trends Quarterly, and find it both relevant and helpful to your practice. 

Helping Healthcare Care,

Patrick M. Schmidt

Publisher