Medical Audits have a range of hygiene audit tools developed to ensure you can evidence your compliance with National Hospital hygiene Standards.
Importantly, our systems are developed by Professionals with decades of experience working in the Health service across the UK and Ireland.
Karina Svarcaite, Compliance Manager, Assurance & Contracts, Essentia
Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust
The team have 5 full time auditors using Medical Audits software all day and every day
HYGIENE AUDIT TOOL
A clean safe environment is an essential component of safe patient care.
The patient environment includes the furniture, equipment, fixtures and fittings, walls, floors etc.
The patient environment, especially high touch surfaces such as cot sides and equipment such as commodes have been identified as the source of transmission of infection and have been linked to many outbreaks internationally.
“The importance of effective environmental hygiene cannot be overemphasized, particularly in the role good hygiene plays in reducing the transmission of infection in hospitals and in the context of growing pathogen resistance” (HIQA, 2016)
Using our knowledge of Infection Prevention standards internationally we have developed a range of infection prevention and control audit tools
These audits:
✔ Support staff at local level in auditing their own departments – increasing end user involvement in audit processes
✔ Provide the ideal audit tools for Management walkabout audits
✔ Provide audit tools for local technical audits
✔ Infection prevention and Control oversight audit tools
✔ Provide individual, easy to use, standardised audits Including:
- Hospital Linen audit tools
- Healthcare Waste audit tools
- Patient equipment audit tools
- Sharps audit tools
- Environmental hygiene audit tools
✔ Amalgamates all your hygiene audits into a powerful reporting system for analysis of patterns and trends.
✔ Provide detailed analysis for Infection prevention and control (IPC) teams to evidence compliance levels and identify risks
✔ Help you manage the risks identified, supporting your Quality improvement programme
Our experienced team are acutely aware of the issues that are constantly identified by CQC Inspectors, HIQA inspectors and NHS improvement professionals.
National Standards for the Prevention and Control of Healthcare Associated Infections in Ireland
Inspections conducted in public acute hospitals against the National Standards for the Prevention and Control of Healthcare Associated Infections regularly find issues related to the cleanliness of the patient environment, safety and cleanliness of patient equipment and management of linen, waste and sharps.
Environmental hygiene In NHS England Hospitals
Inspections conducted by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) routinely find issues related to the cleanliness of the patient environment, safety and cleanliness of patient equipment and management of linen, waste and sharps.
CQC recently reported they have now completed an inspection of all acute hospitals and specialist hospitals in England. Many show improvements but 52% still have areas ‘requiring improvement’.
Hospital Hygiene audits in In Wales
Health Inspectorate Wales (HIW) changed their approach from single ward inspections to broader, multi ward and multi-site hospital inspections in 2016. They found “Not all members of the multidisciplinary ward teams (for example doctors and visiting therapy staff) were vigilant at following correct infection prevention and control procedures. This increases the risk of cross infection and contamination between patients and ward areas”(HIW, 2016)
Standards for Infection prevention and Control in NHS Scotland
Inspections conducted by Healthcare Environment Inspectorate (HEI) NHS QIS Healthcare Associated Infection (HAI) Standards. They too find issues related to the cleanliness of the patient environment, safety and cleanliness of patient equipment and management of linen, waste and sharps.
Our audit systems are designed to enable auditing of National Infection Prevention standards and guidelines so you can identify areas for improvement, devise quality improvement plans and evidence compliance.