Infection Prevention & Control

• If you’re visiting a patient or getting treatment, remember to clean your hands when you enter and leave the hospital and before eating. Soap and water or an alcohol-based hand rub should be used.
• If you’re visiting a patient who has special isolation instructions posted by the door of his/her patient room, be sure to follow the instructions completely and all the time. These may include wearing a gown and gloves while you’re in the patient’s room, not touching the patient or equipment/furniture in the room, not using the patient’s bathroom, and washing your hands before and after putting on gloves.
• Patients – Ask your doctor, nurse, other healthcare professional and all visitors to clean their hands before touching you. It’s your right as a patient.

Properly cleaning your hands

Are you cleaning your hands properly? Follow these simple steps to ensure a clean result:

Using warm running water and soap:

• Rub hands together briskly for 15 to 20 seconds.
• Rinse hands thoroughly and dry with a clean paper towel.
• Use paper towel to turn off the tap.
• Use these tips at home too.

Using alcohol-based hand rub:

• Squirt enough hand rub to cover both of your hands (the size of a toonie).
• Thoroughly rub the product into your hands, including the back of your hands, your wrists, between your fingers and under your nails.
• Rub until dry or around 15 seconds. 

Make sure you wash your hands:

• Before and after visiting a patient.
• After coughing or blowing your nose.
• After using the washroom.
• Before eating.

We encourage anyone who comes to us for care to know when and how to properly clean their hands, and to feel comfortable asking about available hand-hygiene resources. 

We continue to maintain high standards with our cleaning, based on best practices, and we continue to provide expertise and advice in this area to other hospitals across the country. We conduct regular audits of our environments and cleaning process. And we have standardized processes for regular cleaning and isolation cleaning. Our Environmental Services department also works in partnership with our Infection Prevention and Control team to maintain these high standards. Our staffing levels were increased when we opened our new hospital in St. Catharines, and the staffing levels across our sites have been maintained since then. A new trigger system that enables us to quickly respond to increased activity, including suspected C. difficile cases, with enhanced cleaning and patient isolation. Here are some other ways we are exceeding the provincial standard:

• Cleaning practices related to C. difficile and other hospital-acquired infections have been enhanced. This includes twice daily cleaning of rooms with patients who are in contact isolation, deep cleaning of specific units as required, full facility cleans, and enhanced housekeeping audits and checklists.
• We have extended the use of sporicidal agents across our sites, vs. use solely in patient bathrooms.
• Terminal clean – more intensive cleaning – takes place across facilities; units with increased activity.
• Regular hand hygiene audits of staff and physicians will continue to ensure 100 per cent compliance with best practice. Staff and physicians must clean their hands before and after every contact with a patient and the patient environment, as well as before an aseptic procedure and after body fluid exposure risk.
• Ongoing screening of ER patients, inpatients and outpatients, including those coming to clinics and for tests.
• Genetic testing (PCR) for C. difficile; more accurate, detecting more cases.
• We have created additional private capacity for patients requiring isolation.
• There are limits on movement of equipment between units.
• We continue to use a marking system to identify cleaned equipment. This ensures staff use only equipment that has been thoroughly cleaned according to infection prevention and control standards.
• Food and drink is discouraged in patient rooms unless it is for the patients.
• Antibiotic stewardship enhancements are ongoing across our sites.
• Enhanced transparency and clear communication approach continues.
• Clear signage, hand hygiene stations, and overhead voice message concerning the need for hand hygiene are present.

The public is asked not to bring pets or plants to the hospital.

This restriction does not include service and therapy animals. The visitation of pets belonging to patients will be reviewed in by our Infection Prevention and Control department on an individual basis in compassionate circumstances.

For any deliveries to patients: Flowers in vase (no plants with soil) can be delivered to all areas and can be left with the patient on the window sill- until patient discharged.   Flowers should be discarded if their appearance begins to look poor.

For any deliveries to staff: Flowers in vase (no plants with soil) can be delivered to staff at nurses’ station but needs to be taken home in 24 hours.

No flowers/plants allowed along hallways of clinical areas.

Animals and plants are sources that can transmit infectious agents, and we hope people will understand that this measure is important to prevent the spread of infection.

Visitors are asked not to bring food or drink into the hospital to eat while visiting patients. The only people who should be eating or drinking in the patient rooms are the patients. If you do bring in food for your loved ones, please check in with the nursing station as is the usual practice because they may be on a special diet.