Good hygiene is the building block for good healthcare. Without one, the other cannot really exist. In our previous issue, we highlighted how healthcare hygiene is critical even beyond COVID-19. We highlighted its challenges, scope and a lot more and came to the conclusion that it is extremely important to prevent the spread of germs, especially, in hospital settings, healthcare-related facilities, such as dialysis centres, nursing homes, and general public places (e.g., gyms, shopping complexes, etc.). In fact, according to a recent report, thousands of people across the world die from infections acquired while receiving healthcare. Hygiene is one of the easiest, nonetheless, an important means to reduce the spread of diseases and infection. It is particularly important for healthcare professionals, such as nurses, doctors, and healthcare technicians, who are in direct contact with patients.

This month, we explore an interesting example of healthcare hygiene. We spoke to Mr. Bhimrao Dhoble, Housekeeping Manager (Head of Soft Service) at Aster DM Healthcare about the importance of healthcare hygiene, exclusive measures taken at Aster DM Healthcare to maintain hygiene, biggest challenges in cleaning, cleaning schedules and more. 

How important is hygiene for you?

Good healthcare starts with good hygiene and cleaning in hospitals & Clinics, doctors’ surgeries, and other healthcare facilities. When taking care of yourself, colleagues, patients and visitors, effective hand hygiene and cleaning solutions in hospitals and healthcare facilities are critical to improving the quality and safety of care. Good hygiene lowers your risk for diseases and illnesses commonly spread through viruses and bacteria. We, at Aster DM Healthcare believe that good hygiene helps our patients and staff to stay healthy and offers countless positive benefits for their physical, emotional, and psychological health.

What exclusive measures do you take to ensure the highest levels of hygiene and safety for your patients?

Healthcare facilities require a lot of special care and a knowledge of how to properly sanitise floors, counters, medical equipment and other surfaces in order to keep clinics germ-free. Hygiene and healthcare are synonymous to each other, and we ensure to optimally utilise every opportunity to maintain high standards of hygiene & thereby, patient Safety. Starting from proper & timely Induction on joining, skilling on technical aspects of their roles with defined & structured on job training of our staff members. 

What are some of the common challenges you have had to face in terms of maintaining a clean and hygienic facility?

Aligning everyone onto a common page and training them on the specific areas of their job role is quite a task. Moreover, given the high attrition rates we have it makes the issue even more crucial.

How do you overcome these challenges?

By ensuring a proper induction program, hand-holding and daily briefing process has helped us keep pace with new updates as well as stay connected as a team. Proper communication, refreshment training and strict adherence to International patient safety goals plays a paramount role in our success.

Tell us about your best practices to reduce HAIs.

HAI is one of the most critical Business Metrics that we track and closely monitor given the impact on Patient Safety. We ensure that we follow specified protocols across the facility from Washrooms to Lobby & Doctor chambers to Treatment room. We perform random audits across the facilities and reward the units which are fully compliant on the defined parameters. 

What does a typical cleaning schedule at your hospital look like? How frequently do you clean?

The clinics undergo thorough sanitization every morning and the process begins with disinfecting the ‘high touch surfaces’ like handles of the doors, walls, flush, light switches and cleaning it. The cleaned clinics are inspected every 30 minutes. It is instantly documented on a chart & checklist provided for each facility. The worker assigned ticks the checklist when his/her work is done. In the frequent inspections done by the janitor team, they clean and sanitise the area if there are visibly soiled places and objects and disinfect the place every half an hour. 

How has hospital hygiene evolved in recent years?

We, at Aster Clinics/Hospitals, do focus on the Kaizen approach and have updated our hygiene practices by benchmarking them with Global standards. We have deployed use of Technology to upgrade our hygiene standards as well as uplift efficacy, especially in our OTs. As healthcare workers are entering the workforce to meet an increased demand, it's more important than ever to uphold a high hand hygiene standard in hospitals, health care practitioner (HCP) offices and other healthcare facilities. Keeping up with good hand hygiene is essential to help both workers and patients stay safe and healthy. 

A focused and structured approach to hygiene, as well as methods for infection prevention:

All healthcare workers use hand sanitisers or wash their hands with soap and water at five critical moments:

• Before touching the patient
• Before a clean/aseptic procedure
• After body fluid exposure risk
• After touching the patient
• After touching patient surroundings
• At every washing station we have hand rubs, and soap with 9 steps for hand sanitising and 5 hand wash steps posters. 
• Drying the hands with paper not dryers:

Wet or moist hands transport more microorganisms than dry hands. Hands are always to be dried immediately after washing and in a gentle manner to avoid friction between skin and towel, but the efficiency depends on how and how long they are dried.

The most hygienic choice is single-use paper towels, as they are the safe, gentle and efficient choice that does not spread microorganisms to the hands or the surroundings. They are disposed of in a safe manner immediately after use.

Gloves are worn by health care professionals when performing tasks related to personal hygiene or handling of bodily fluids. They can be used for clean and unclean tasks to protect both health care professionals and patients from transmittable diseases.

Our nursing in charges of every healthcare facility trained as well as provided refreshment trainings to whole team for International Patient Safety Goals, specifically IPSG 6, and observed significant improvement in the assessment of our hygiene practises from 65% to 96% for the year 2022

How do you train your cleaning staff? How frequently are they trained?

We follow a structured L&D agenda for our staff and ensure they attend the induction program which is a combination of process, policies and technical knowledge with impetus of application of knowledge on-ground. There are daily briefings, weekly updates and monthly training which are planned and delivered to the entire staff. In case of any violations or non-compliances, the reporting manager takes the corrective and preventive actions to avoid future repercussions. 

Undoubtedly, Aster DM Healthcare is constantly working to provide a hygiene and safe experience to its staff, patients and visitors. This reflects in its unique best practices and a consistent urge to improve its processes.