We talk about cleanliness a lot.

No matter what setting you operate in, good hygiene and disinfection practices keep your clinicians and your patients or residents safe from infectious disease all underpinned by a robust sluice/dirty utility room solution.

Whether your facility uses bedpan washers or pulp macerators, as long as you have people to care for your facility will have a steady flow of infectious material moving through your sluice/dirty utility rooms.

What Does That Mean?

A conservative estimate puts sluice/dirty utility room usage at fifty times a day. That is undeniably a significant amount of infectious material moving through a sluice room that needs to be quickly and safely disposed of.

However this doesn’t mean there are fifty opportunities for something to go wrong and your sluice/dirty utility room become the epicentre of a major outbreak.
Undoubtedly improper handling of infectious material or misuse of sluice/dirty utility room equipment makes an outbreak more likely but this is just as true walking through a busy ward.

It is a common misconception that the sluice/dirty utility room in your facility is a hot spot for infection in a hospital or care home. Providing the room has been designed properly, fitted correctly, procedures are followed and your equipment is both used properly and maintained, the risk is actually significantly less than on the ward.

The reason for this simple: everything – especially your machinery – is designed to be clean.

Effective Infection Control

Undeniably, both machine types handle some categorically unclean material and if human waste did not pose a threat to the health and wellbeing of clinicians and patients there would be no need to have these solutions in the first place.

The reality however is quite different and bedpan washers and pulp macerators are designed to protect users from infectious material by containing it and disposing of it with zero risk to the operator.

In addition to an effective cleaning cycle, the machines are designed to prevent harmful microbes from taking root on or in the machines.

The technology you have in your sluice/dirty utility room will vary but there are a number of features in DDC Dolphin machines that are specifically designed to prevent harmful microbes from cultivating.

• Seamless chambers
• Hands free technology
• Anti-microbial coating
• Adjustable nozzles
• Pre & Post-wash cycles

All of these serve as safeguards, either passively or actively to prevent blockages, safely dispose of infectious material and prevent outbreaks.

Then the machines run through a cleaning cycle. Providing you are supplementing your disposal/cleaning cycles with a cleaning agent like Hygenex then your bedpan washer or pulp macerator will be ready and safe to use.

Effective Prevention

Part of keeping your bedpan washer or pulp macerator operating at peak efficiency is keeping it maintained.

Preventative maintenance ensures your equipment does just that. Failure to do so can compromise the cleaning cycle and expose your clinicians and therefore you patients to infectious material.

Maintained equipment significantly reduces the likelihood of mechanical failure and the associated problems a failed machine can cause.

Increased load on other sluice rooms, hand washing bedpans or storing pulp bedpans all increase the risk of outbreak.

There is also the impact on the clinicians in terms of reduced productivity and increased stress as they are forced to take alternative measures.

DDC Dolphin is an industry leader in infection control solutions in clinical and care home settings. To learn more about our services click here or to speak to one of our team, contact us today.