Processes: Optimisation and Solutions Archive

Preventing Infection, Processes: Optimisation and Solutions

“Hand hygiene is always good news for your patients”

Do good and talk about it: In her “Hygiene Communication Concept”, Claudia James, hygiene-specialist and Senior Expert Marketing at Knieler & Team GmbH, explains how communication can improve hand hygiene compliance of physicians and nursing staff. By voicing hand disinfection staff shapes own hygiene behaviour and at the same time gives patients valuable insights into possibilities to participate in their own healing process. In our interview, the expert describes the background to her findings and gives specific instructions for putting these into practice.

Comfort and Convenience, Processes: Optimisation and Solutions

Surgical scrubs: Choosing the right clothing improves patients’ safety

Surgical scrubs can aid in containing the spread of microorganisms found on the skin and on clothing worn outside the surgical area, and lower the incidence of surgical site infections. Choosing the right clothing for the personnel transfer area and establishing guidelines are important steps in limiting microbial spread and promoting patient safety.

Processes: Optimisation and Solutions

New recommendation on storage duration for sterile medical devices

Not only medical products play a decisive role in safe and hygienically secure operations. It is also essential that staples, scissors, hooks and other instruments are properly stored. This is the key message of the German Society for Sterile Supply (DGSV) in its “Recommendation on storage duration for sterile medical devices”. The type of storage is particularly important when single-use instruments are used, and this factor also determines the recommended length of storage.

Processes: Optimisation and Solutions

“Disregard for hygiene is no longer acceptable“

How can hand hygiene compliance in hospitals be increased? This is one question that Simone Scheithauer addresses in her studies. Scheithauer is head of the Institute for Hospital Hygiene and Infectious Diseases at the University Hospital Göttingen, Germany. In the interview, she reveals reasons for poor compliance, along with effective approaches for better hand hygiene.

Preventing Infection, Processes: Optimisation and Solutions

Disposable draping materials: Reducing the contamination of surgical wounds

Surgical drapes isolate the surgical site from non-sterile areas of the patient’s body and the operating table. They reduce the risk of surgical site infections (SSI). Optimising their barrier function can help to prevent microbial contamination and to improve patients’ safety.

Processes: Optimisation and Solutions

“Microbiology and the development of medical products go hand in hand”

Tina Leeb is an expert in microbiology. For the past three years, the experienced microbiologist has conducted research in product development for Lohmann & Rauscher and has helped to build the company’s own competence centre for biofilm. In our interview, she explains the unique characteristics of biofilm, the connection between medical products and microbiology, and what inspires her in her work.

Processes: Optimisation and Solutions

Antimicrobial coatings: a new opportunity for reducing nosocomial infections?

Nosocomial infections represent the most frequent adverse event for patients during hospital stays, and they threaten the quality of patient care. Removing pathogens from inanimate surfaces could be a useful and helpful complement to conventional hygiene measures.

Processes: Optimisation and Solutions

The biofilm mystery – Why do wounds fail to heal?

When wounds fail to close, medical assistance is needed. Here, measures to prevent biofilms from forming in the wound play a decisive role. Bacteria can lead to delayed wound healing – and this occurs much more frequently than previously assumed.

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