As I had alluded to in the opening blog for 2014, this is
the year of themes. The theme for the
first quarter (Q1) of 2014 was pretty obvious - pathogens, bugs, or whatever
name you would like to give the pesky critters that cause us to lose sleep over
managing outbreaks and HAIs. Have you
picked up the theme for Q2? It's the
story of how to choose a disinfectant, or in the very least areas that should
and need to be considered outside of focusing on what a product kills and what
a product costs so that the most effective environmental hygiene program can be
justified to the powers that be.
It's a story that Lee and I have been weaving throughout
our blogs since we started back in May of 2011 when we introduced the Talk Clean
To Me blog and our mantra of clearing away the haze of smoke and mirrors
marketing that surrounds disinfectants.
As Lee discussed in last week's blog "The little devil or the little angel, which do you choose?" developing the business case to
justify moving to a new disinfectant is not as easy as one would hope. The unfortunate truth being that it is more
often than not easier to remain as the status quo then trying to be that fish
swimming upstream.
Here's where we hope we can help. For those of you who have seen Lee or I
speak, the picture used for this week's blog is a slide that is used in almost
EVERY one of our presentations. If you
look back through our blogs, we have written one on virtually every topic:
Strength is not always found in numbers, Dirty to Disinfected in 60 seconds flat, To Clean or Not to Clean, Is PPE the necessary evil?, What's in Your Bottle? and The Unintentional Consequences of Improving Infection Prevention,
and while we recognize the importance of understanding the theory we have gone
to provide the tools to simplify things and help you make the right decision
for your facility.
Selection of a disinfectant really can be made as simple
as tabling out the desired traits of a disinfectant and adding any criteria
that is specific to the needs of your hospital.
You can in turn develop a rating
system that would allow you to more objectively look at the overall picture and
how the product answers the needs of your facility - keeping in mind of course
that you'll never have a single product for everything...well unless of course
you want to be dealing with calls over ruined surfaces due to material
compatibility or occupational health and safety complaints associated with
occupational injury from inappropriate use of a product! Here's
a snap shot of what my table would look like (click here for the full
Disinfectant Product Assessment Tool).
From an evaluation perspective, a Likert Scale can be
used that assigns values from 1 to 5 such as the following:
1
|
2
|
3
|
4
|
5
|
Product
Does Not Meet Needs
|
Product
Somewhat Meets Needs
|
Neutral
|
Product
Mostly Meets Needs
|
Product
Meets Needs
|
Upon completion of the full Assessment Tool, you can then
calculate a numerical rating:
Voila! You now have a comprehensive and reasonably
objective Disinfectant Product Assessment Tool that can be used to compare
product to product. Certainly, bias may
come through if say you have a better relationship with one supplier than
another or if (as Lee stated last week) you play the part of the Devil by
simple inactivity or complacency of not wanting to go through the effort of
converting to a safer and more effective disinfectant. But, if you take the time to work though this
assessment tool using the EPA Approved label and product MSDS, you may be
surprised by what choice you make!
Bugging Off!
Nicole
