Here’s how to ensure that your patients stay safe from contamination:

Prevent Employees From Home-Washing Their Uniforms

Medical uniforms, clean or otherwise, should never leave a medical facility unless taken by a  medical laundry service specialist. Studies show that bacteria and viruses can survive on fabrics like scrub suits and lab coats. 

When employees take uniforms home, that exposes their family (and to some extent, the public) to pathogens their medical uniforms have picked up during their shift. On the other hand, freshly washed scrubs can make contact with pathogens in the home or public before arriving at work. As a result, patients become exposed to them. 

Ensure Safe Medical Linens by Practicing Proper Handling of Soiled Linen 

Soiled linen is not only potentially ridden with dangerous microbes, but they are a ticking time bomb of cross-contamination. Without strict protocols for handling and transporting soiled linens, they can contaminate surrounding surfaces, as this study confirms. 

For example, linens exposeded to bodily fluids need containment during removal from the patient room. When transported to the laundry facility, they must not make contact with any surface – especially anywhere near clean linens. Protocols like this are one of the few barriers against pathogenic outbreak. As a result, on-site uniform service is one of the best ways to establish and maintain these barriers. 

Package and Store Clean Linens Safely and Securely 

The handling, packaging, and storage of clean healthcare linens are crucial in maintaining their safety. As these healthcare laundry guidelines from TRSA stress, contaminants can survive on many surfaces for days, and even weeks. 

To prevent them from undermining your laundry’s integrity, they must be secured with dedicated storage. For example, this includes secure packaging, transport carts used solely for clean linens, and regimented sanitation procedures. 

Work With a Reliable, Medical-Specialized Uniform Service Provider

Cleaning and managing linen inventory is a process all its own. Entire facilities and staff must be dedicated to the mission of cleanliness for consistent success. Staying on top of your materials and making sure that they’re clean and within budget is taxing. Working with a medical linen specialist like Medico is your best option to ensure stability of supply, cleanliness, and protection against contamination.

Medico Healthcare Linen Service

Medico Healthcare Linen Service is not your ordinary healthcare linen service provider. When it comes to their linen and garment needs, we specialize in providing the most comprehensive support for healthcare facilities.

With Medico Healthcare Linen, you can rest assured that your linens are:

• Transported in specific vehicles 
• Handled by skilled, highly-trained professionals
• Laundered in a sanitary laundry facility that abide by the highest standards in healthcare linen cleanliness
• Processed in a Hygienically Clean-Certified and HLAC Accredited facility
• Tagged and tracked using bar codes to protect your inventory against losses and mix-ups
•  Picked up and delivered on-time  

Medico Healthcare Linen Service can bring you the quality, quantity and peace of mind that your healthcare facility deserves.

Contact Medico Today!

Contact Medico today to learn more about our services, product selection, or get a free quote. Call us at (800) 464-6334. We’ll get your medical linen and uniform needs taken care of. 

The post How to Ensure Safe Medical Linens and Uniforms appeared first on Medico Healthcare Linen Service.

Here’s why medical workers should keep scrubs contained to the hospital, clinic, or other medical facility: 

Dangers to the Medical Worker

It’s easy to feel comfortable when it’s time to leave work. When an employee goes through the exit, more of their job is with them than they want to think about. The longer their clothes from work are on their body, the longer they’re exposing themselves to those dangers. All it takes is a touch and a forgetful eye rub to introduce dangerous microbes. 

Dangers to the Medical Worker’s Family

If the scrubs that protected a medical worker all day are coming home with them at night, it’s impossible to leave work at the door. Depending on the kind of environment a medical worker is in, they could be taking home some dangerous guests. Bacteria, harmful microbes, and viruses are all too common, and all too resilient in the fibers of clothing. 

Home laundromats are not equipped with the cleaning agents or temperatures needed to properly clean medical scrubs. Without those means available, those harmful microbes aren’t killed. If sharing a load with other clothing items or towels, there’s a chance those microbes are going to spread. 

Dangers to the Public 

Though it’s unlikely that the public comes into contact with scrubs that are being worn post-shift, it’s not impossible. If a counter is leaned on, a door pushed open with a shoulder, a shirt used to open a bathroom handle – that’s a possible point of transmission. It’s difficult to account for every variable that could arise in public, but the possibilities are certain. 

Dangers to the Patients 

Perhaps the most vulnerable people to scrubs worn outside the medical facility are those inside the facility. When working with sick people, compromised immune systems, wounds, or other injuries, risk of infection is never too far away. If the scrubs that were worn outside, for lunch or to run errands, comes back in, it’s bringing with it every thing it encountered. If somebody in line sneezes or coughs in your direction, whatever is in it could stick to your scrubs. That’s exposure to foreign agents that might cause unnecessary complications. 

How to Keep Scrubs Clean, Safe, and Ready

Work in the medical field is also some of the most dangerous work around. It doesn’t need to be made more dangerous due to unsafe scrub maintenance procedures. To ensure that your medical facility, employees, patients, and the public are protected, institute a uniform program. Through a quality provider like Medico Linen, your medical facility’s uniforms will always be clean and ready. 

Call Medico Healthcare Linen Services Today

Above all, safety is the most important aspect of any medical operation. If you’re ready to embrace certainty and confidence in your medical facility’s scrubs, give Medico a call at (800) 464-6334. Contact us here for more information! 

The post The Dangers of Wearing Scrubs in Public appeared first on Medico Healthcare Linen Service.

Though only 1% of needle injuries that happen every year nationwide occur in laundry facilities, that’s still between 1,250 to 1,700 incidents annually. HIV and Hepatitis top the list of likely transmissions during an accident, so it’s best to be as cautious and prepared as possible.

Sharps Prevention

Though unintentional, sharps can show up in medical laundry. Injuries from sharps left in soiled linens are a leading cause of injury in the medical laundry industry. Prevention training is vital to limit your employees’ exposure to infectious diseases. 

Here is how you can protect your staff:

Use Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

There’s no substitute for the basics. PPE in your medical laundry facility should take the form of gloves, gowns, lab coats, face shields or masks. This is a necessity in the soiled side, or intake part of your business, but might be extended to the “clean side” if the need arises.

Have No-Touch Methods of Sharp Removal

The soil side of your linen laundry facility is the most at risk for sharps exposure. Employees are tasked with removing them when found, and need to do so safely. 

Here are two safe methods of sharp removal:

• Metal on Metal: Use grasping devices when pulling sharps from linen or uniforms. Never use an ungloved hand. 

• Shake and Separate: Though shaking of soiled linen isn’t usually recommended, if a sharp is present and unyielding to grasping efforts, gently shaking the attached linen will loosen the sharp.

Have Sharp Containers Available 

Sharps can appear at any time, and you need to have a place to dispose of them. Sharps containers are puncture-proof, water-tight, and easily identifiable. 

Cultivate a Safety Culture

Training and educating your employees is essential in order to keep them safe. The CDC has suggestions for influencing employee attitudes and behavior permanently. 

1. Make visible safety-related statements. 

Safety comes first, and visual reminders throughout your facility will serve as constant reminders.

• Prioritize safety committees. It’s easy to brush off groups responsible for overseeing safety protocols if they have no bite. Giving authority or integrating leadership into the safety committee will generate more concern over their activities and conclusions. 
• Establish specific action plans. Having observable protocols and procedures in place for when something does go wrong for specific departments makes your safety efforts more effective. 

2. Involve personnel from various departments.

One department pushing its will onto others will find resentment instead of adherence for their efforts. Including members from all sectors of your business will make the effort more integrated and effective.

3. Encourage reporting and documentation of found sharps.

Your employees should document when they encounter a sharp. There are many reasons for this documentation, and your employee should know that these efforts are to ultimately safeguard them from future exposure. Some reasons include: 

• Source Tracing. If there is a timing or linen similarity to the presence of sharps, then it might not take much to piece together which department is responsible. 
• Company Safety. Any hazardous material or situation needs to be documented and addressed. With enough information, decisions can be made as to how to best deal with the issues.

Medico Is Your Safe, Professional Medical Linen Service

If you’re looking for a reliable medical linen service with the experience and industry know-how to deliver clean, sharp-free linens every time, trust Medico Linen Service.

Between our HLAC certification and our clean green  laundry process, there’s no question as to whether you’re making the right choice. Above all, we strive for your total satisfaction. Call us today at 800.464.6334 and ask about a free quote.

The post How to Keep Sharps Out of Your Medical Linen appeared first on Medico Healthcare Linen Service.

Aside from the large-scale problem of linen misuse and linen theft in the healthcare industry, it has been found that one of the most common reasons for linen loss is throwing still-useful linens into the trash. There is a general misunderstanding of when linens are actually unsalvageable and beyond laundering, and they get immediately thrown out even when they still have a lot of life and use in them.

And so we reach this most important question: when is soiled too soiled?

Classifying Your Linens

To answer this question, let’s get into the basics of identifying and classifying hospital linens. In most cases, linens are sorted into clean and used. And the latter part of this generic binary is where most of the losses occur. There is more than one kind of used linen in the healthcare setup: one that’s ‘soiled’ – ones that are used, and ones that are ‘contaminated’ – with blood, urine, feces, and other bodily fluids.

The OSHA mandates that any item contaminated with blood and Other Potentially Infectious Materials (OPIM) should be contained in a red bag. Because of the ‘blood and OPIM’ component of this mandate, many nurses throw away contaminated linens, thinking that they classify as biohazards because they have been tainted with possibly infectious materials.

But according to an OSHA clarification on the issue of red bag wastes and contaminated linens, it is clear that linens contaminated with blood and OPIM need not go into red bags and be disposed of the same way other biohazard wastes do as long as they have been properly labeled as contaminated laundry and are processed in accordance to the universal precautions in the handling of all laundry.

With proper education and communication within the healthcare facility and the medical linen service provider, hospitals and other healthcare facilities can work on an OSHA-compliant laundry-sorting system that segregates soiled laundry from contaminated laundry and saves a large amount of linens – and cash – in the process.

This, then, leads us to our next big question: when do we throw away linens?

Linen Reject System

Throwing away linens should be the last course of action. Instead, healthcare facilities should go for recycling of linens that are deemed too soiled or too damaged to save.

To achieve this, every hospital must have its own linen quality control system and team that decides when linens can still be saved by re-laundering or are beyond salvation and should be recycled into rags. This way, every linen in your facility is trashed based only on conservative and consistent across-the-board criteria and none is thrown out before it is ‘fully’ utilized.  

Avoid Linen Loss with a Certified Medical Linen Service Provider

With education and a reliable medical linen service provider, linen losses can be prevented! Contact Medico today to learn more about our HLAC-certified, hygienically clean practice to help prevent unnecessary losses in your healthcare facility!

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