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Environmental services: Prevent infections and ensure safety

Briefings on Infection Control, December 1, 2009

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Even with initiatives such as hand hygiene awareness, respiratory etiquette, and standard and contact precautions hoarding much of the IC spotlight, environmental cleaning and disinfection have emerged as primary sources for infection prevention.

As organisms such as MRSA and C. diff have become an increasing concern for hospitals and outpatient care facilities, environmental services employees have evolved into a critical sector of IC and worker safety.

“There is this understanding and acceptance and recognition and respect that environmental services technicians are the front line of infection prevention,” says Patti Costello, executive director of the American Society of Healthcare Environmental Services (ASHES). “You’re only as good as your weakest link, so the better your training, the better your communication with infection control, and the better the relationship between environmental services and the infection control professional, the stronger your environmental services program is going to be.”

However, their increased importance in preventing infections necessitates more training requirements for both IC policies and OSHA compliance.

Training contract workers
Whether your facility hires contract environmental services workers or you have in-house employees, it is your responsibility to ensure that they are trained to follow your facility’s specific IC policies. This training is especially important for medical facilities that primarily use contract environmental services technicians, says Costello.

Some cleaning services are not aware of the particular standards for healthcare facilities, which is why ASHES plans to release guidelines for ambulatory and medical offices in addition to Practice Guidance for
Healthcare Environmental Cleaning, which was already published for hospitals.

“To clean healthcare [facilities], you need to know the regulations,” Costello says. “You need to know all about OSHA, Joint Commission, and occupational health and safety. You’re talking about potential needlesticks and sharps. It’s not like cleaning a school; it’s a whole lot different.”

The type of training you need to provide depends on the terms of your contract agreement, says Jay
Springer, regional safety manager for environmental services and patient transport at Crothall Services Group in Wayne, PA, which contracts environmental services workers to healthcare facilities.

Springer says Crothall requires each of its frontline environmental services technicians to complete three days of company orientation, which includes OSHA requirements such as bloodborne pathogens, hazard communications regarding cleaning chemicals, and using personal protective equipment, along with ergonomics and basic hands-on cleaning and disinfection.

“We’re making sure that employees don’t have opportunities to basically get anything at work that they didn’t bring with them to take home to their families or injure themselves,” Springer says. “Infection control is a piece of it, but it’s also a lot of other things as far as the safety of a person and what could happen to them.”

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login or subscribe to Briefings on Infection Control.

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