Nursing

Medical emergency

Medical equipment

Medicine

American Journal of Infection Control

BackgroundPortable Medical Equipment (PME) such as workstations-on-wheels (WOWs) and vital signs machines (VMs) have been linked to healthcare-associated infections. Routine visual monitoring of PME disinfection is difficult. An automated Disinfection Tracking System (DTS) was used to record and report the number of disinfection events of PME in a hospital setting.MethodsThe study was conducted in 2 acute-care units for 25-days to determine the pattern of recorded events from DTS on PME. Devices record disinfection events as moisture events and automatically store on a central database. DTS devices with “screen-on” feedback and “screen-off” devices with no display were placed on 10 WOWs and 5 VMs on separate units.ResultsA total of 421 moisture events were recorded for the “screen-on” and 345 for the “screen-off”, during the 25-day implementation period on the 2 different hospital units. The highest number of events occurred between 6:00am-7:00am, with 69 & 75 moisture events recorded for Units 1 and 2, respectively.ConclusionsThe pattern of disinfection events for WOWs and VMs demonstrated that most events occurred regularly at the times corresponding with nursing shift change. The DTS has the potential to continuously record, and report data related to PME disinfection.

Capturing portable medical equipment disinfection data via an automated novel disinfection tracking system