Hospital Rooms Get Nearly 70% Cleaner With Visual Cue

A new study published today in the American Journal of Infection Control (AJIC) reports a comparison of hospital room cleanliness using standard disinfectant wipes versus wipes with a color additive that allows users to see which surfaces have been sanitized. With the color additive, rooms were 69.2% cleaner and environmental services (EVS) staff were able to finish the room in slightly less time compared to cleaning with standard wipes. The study was performed at Griffin Hospital in Derby, Connecticut.

“Our study is the first to evaluate color additive-supported hospital cleaning based on microbial burden, and the first to measure impact on cleaning times,” said Olayinka Oremade, MD, MPH, CIC, lead author of the study and infection control manager at Griffin Hospital. “Collectively, our results show that providing a simple visual cue makes an enormous difference in room cleanliness, and it seems to allow cleaning teams to be a bit more efficient in the room turnover process as well.”

Proper disinfection of hospital rooms helps prevent the spread of germs from one patient to another. Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) are a significant risk to patients, and contaminated surfaces in hospitals have been linked to many of these infections, Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC) reported. For example, one study found that hospital patients were nearly six times as likely to acquire an HAI when staying in the bed of a former patient who had that same infection. Many prior studies have shown that despite substantial effort and attention, hospital rooms are simply not as clean as they need to be to prevent HAIs.

In the current study, clinicians tested the outcomes of hospital room sanitation performed two ways. First, they evaluated the status quo for a one-week period during which EVS teams used regular disinfectant wipes to clean surfaces in 10 randomly selected rooms. They then taught the EVS teams to use wipes with a color additive, which shows up on surfaces as blue during cleaning but fades to clear several minutes later when cleaning teams use force and friction. This color cue helps users determine which surfaces have been cleaned with effective technique and which have not.

Finally, the EVS teams cleaned another 10 randomly chosen rooms for a week using wipes with the color additive. For both cleaning periods, non-EVS personnel sampled 10 frequently touched surfaces for the presence of microbes before and after rooms were sanitized. Such surfaces included sink handles, bedrails, call remotes, light switches, phones, and toilet seats, among others. In addition, non-EVS staff members monitored room turnover time to determine whether the color additive had any role in the length of the cleaning process.

Results demonstrated the effectiveness of using the color additive. In both weeks of the study, 92% of surfaces sampled prior to cleaning were positive for microbial colonies. After disinfection, rooms cleaned with standard wipes still had microbes present on 60% of surfaces sampled, while rooms cleaned using the color additive saw the microbial presence reduced to 31% of surfaces, a 48% improvement. A deeper analysis of the microbes that remained after cleaning showed that the use of the wipes with color additive left rooms 69.2% cleaner than the standard wipes. In addition, the additive slightly reduced the cleaning time needed, from 39.1 minutes to 36.8 minutes.

Throughout the study, researchers performed microbial samplings on 400 surfaces, 200 for the control period and 200 for the color additive period. Bedrails were the most frequently sampled surface while cabinets, headboards, faucet handles, and infusion pumps were the least sampled.

The color additive used in the wipes is compatible with many commercially available disinfectant products.

 “Effective disinfection protocols are essential for successful infection prevention and control in healthcare settings,” said Tania Bubb, PhD, RN, CIC, FAPIC, 2024 APIC president. “This study exemplifies the idea that simple but creative solutions can help us improve critical tasks associated with keeping patients safe and healthy.”