Do Your Nurses & Staff Understand What Touchpoints Are?
In a healthcare facility it is critical that our cleaner’s aren’t the only one’s who understand what touchpoints are and how to clean them, but our nurses, managers and admin staff as well.
Touchpoints are surfaces that we frequently touch and therefore have a much higher risk of spreading germs, bacteria and viruses.
Keeping your touchpoints clean is one of the most important ways that you can keep your organisation, team, patients, residents and family members safe from cross-contamination, especially when we know that germs and viruses can survive on surfaces for up to 28 days.
While nurses do wash their hands often, the nursing station is often shared by many other staff. The main high risk areas of concern are not only patient areas, but the personal spaces they use throughout the day and the things they touch often such as:
Computer mouse
Keyboard
Telephone
Desktop
Reception counter
Mobile ECG and computer carts
Healthcare cleaning is often built around a cleaning team with large trolleys, stocked with good quality microfibre moistened correctly that gets laundered each day. That system of cleaning is often not easily accessed by other staff that are frequenting nurses stations, meeting rooms, offices and personal storage areas.
We need to be keeping the touchpoint’s in our nurses stations and office areas clean as frequently as we would clean our hands. Best practise infection control recommends wiping desks and surfaces with an alcohol based cleaner each time they sit down between patient rounds to eliminate any virus or bacteria that may be there.
Suitable wipes should be kept at these workstations for cleaning and disinfection without causing harm to the surfaces. With COVID and the need to do more frequent touchpoint cleaning, we’ve designed new wipes in smaller pack sizes that are easy to store wherever you need them.
Share with your team and get everyone working towards creating safer and healthier facilities today.