ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

A simple visual cue could improve the efficiency and efficacy of hospital cleaning, according to a study.

US researchers equipped hospital cleaners with wipes containing a colour additive that allowed users to see which surfaces had been sanitised.

They found that when using the wipe with the colour additive, rooms were 69.2 per cent cleaner and could be cleaned faster than when cleaning with standard wipes.

Clinicians at the Connecticut medical facility equipped their cleaning teams with regular disinfectant wipes and asked them to clean surfaces in 10 randomly-selected rooms for a week. On the second week they gave them wipes with a colour additive that showed up on surfaces as blue during cleaning but that faded to clear when force and friction were used. This allowed users to see what had been cleaned and what had not.

In both weeks of the study, 92 per cent of surfaces sampled before cleaning tested positive for microbial colonies. Rooms cleaned with standard wipes still had microbes present on 60 per cent of surfaces after disinfection, whereas germs were detected on only 31 per cent of surfaces after the colour additive had been used.

And cleaning time was reduced from 39.1 minutes to 36.8 minutes when the additive was employed.

"Our study is the first to evaluate colour additive-supported hospital cleaning based on microbial burden and the first to measure impact on cleaning times," said lead author of the study Olayinka Oremade.

"Collectively our results show that providing a simple visual cue makes an enormous difference in room cleanliness and seems to allow cleaning teams to be a bit more efficient in the room turnover process as well."