National Acute Hospitals Hygiene Audit

The key recommendations arising from the audit are:

A multi disciplinary approach is required at national and local level if hygiene standards are to be improved.

National policies and procedures need to be developed and then implemented at local level

Training of staff is essential and a national training strategy that supports the national policies, procedures and standards needs to be developed.

The amount of technical support available within hospitals should be reviewed to ensure that timely and up to date advice is readily available

A number of multi-disciplinary technical working groups should be convened to develop specific standards at a national level

Hygiene standards should form part of the national performance monitoring framework used by the NHO. They should comprise clearly defined objectives with measurable outcomes.

A multi-disciplinary audit tool reflecting agreed national policies, procedures and standards should be developed and used in all hospitals.

Limitations

The audit represents a ‘spot check’ of standards observed on the day of the visit. The results do not represent standards throughout each hospital over a period of time. However, they do provide an indication of the elements that may need addressing on a hospital wide basis. The timescales involved did not allow the opportunity to revisit areas if a particular element was not observed or staff was unavailable at the time of the visit. Consequently, a ‘Not Applicable’ entry may appear against a particular question in some areas even though the standard or question was applicable to the area.

The number of areas audited in each hospital did not reflect a specific sample size. The maximum number of clinical areas audited was six plus hospital wide waste, irrespective of the hospital size. Consequently within the large and medium sized hospitals the number of areas audited, as a percentage of the total hospital, is relatively low but in the smaller hospitals the percentage may be higher.