A Novel Technique for Identifying Opportunities to Improve Environmental Hygiene in the Operating Room

Environmental cleaning and disinfection is essential for optimizing safe patient care in the OR; however, perioperative staff members have not had an easy-to-use, objective method for determining whether high-touch, potentially contaminated surfaces have been cleaned during terminal room cleaning. To address this issue, members of the Healthcare Environmental Hygiene Study Group used a transparent, removable, environmentally stable disclosing agent and handheld ultraviolet light to determine whether potentially contaminated surfaces had been contacted by a wet disinfection cleaning cloth during terminal cleaning of ORs. Results from the project showed that 237 of 946 targeted surfaces (25%) had the disclosing agent removed (ie, were cleaned). The use of the disclosing agent for staff education and process monitoring has led to significant improvements in the disinfection cleaning process.