Surfaces that are close to the patient are referred to as the “Patient or Hot Zone.” It’s that area within 3 feet around the patient’s bed. Nothing poses a greater risk for transmission than the privacy curtain. While all other high-risk touchpoints are thoroughly disinfected each day, the curtain is often left in place for months.
It is a known fact that environmental cleanliness is the key to curbing the spread of cross-transmission. Not minimizing the effect of meticulous handwashing by healthcare workers, but once clean, their hands can quickly become contaminated again if the environmental surfaces are not clean and disinfected.
The mission of an Environmental Services Department is to create a clean and safe environment where patients can get well and return home quickly. In view of the exchange challenges it is easy to overlook the privacy curtain. Have you considered the possible link between curtains and Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs)?
When a patient is admitted to the room everything (including the bed and the furniture) has been thoroughly cleaned and disinfected; clean linens are on the bed, the restroom is “spic and span” as well as sanitized. Yet the privacy curtain that is often within two feet of the patient’s bed may not have been changed for months, or unless “visibly soiled or stained.” In fact, the curtains may show “unknown” spots or stains that makes one wonder – Is this curtain really clean or not?
Doctors, nurses, patients, family members, housekeepers, along with everybody else entering the room, grab the privacy curtain to open or close it, sometimes with gloves (both clean or soiled), but most of the time without. Frequently the curtains are touched with Staphylococcus aureus, MRSA, C-diff, VRE, or E-coli. In fact, the US has seen a tremendous increase in HAIs: 4.9 million people get infected each year and over 480K people die of HAIs. Of particular concern is that the curtains often stay in place from one sick patient to the next, to the next, to the next.
We think that a more comprehensive approach to changing and tracking privacy curtains is long overdue. Collaboration between infection prevention/control practitioners and the environmental services department is essential in breaking the chain of infection.
Contact us today to learn more about creating a safer environment for your patients.
