Let There Be (UV-C) Light

QUALITY AND SAFETY

AT A TIME WHEN infection prevention is on most everyone’s minds – especially in healthcare settings – Thompson Health continues to enhance the ways in which its staff creates a safe environment for patients and visitors.

For four years, Thompson’s Environmental Services Department has been deploying a R-DTM Rapid Disinfector™ in areas throughout the hospital and, upon request, the adjacent M.M. Ewing Continuing Care Center. Resembling a robot, the mobile system emits a subtype of ultraviolet light called UV-C. It sterilizes surfaces – working in conjunction with manual cleaning – to eradicate harmful pathogens such as MRSA and Clostridium difficile (C. diff).

Recently, the hospital has acquired additional equipment using UV-C light: A sanitizer for the main lobby and countertop UV devices for the Emergency Department, the Intensive Care Unit, the second floor-nursing unit and Perioperative Services.

With the touchless lobby sanitizer, both staff and visitors can disinfect their phones and other personal items within seconds, while performing hand hygiene.

The countertop devices used by staff on the three hospital units are similar to the lobby sanitizer, quickly disinfecting smaller items including watches, stethoscopes and pens.

“The devices are part of the extra steps we take every day to enhance safety in the hospital. They were utilized during the COVID response and added another level of protection,” said Director of Infection Prevention Kristen Bloom, noting everything – with the exception of the lobby unit – was in place prior to COVID, with funds from the Thompson Health COVID Emergency Fund used to purchase the latter over the summer.

The R-DTM Rapid Disinfector™ has been the subject of much curiosity at Thompson over the past four years. The Environmental Services staff even helped create a brochure to  explain to patients and visitors how it works.

The system is developed by a Rochester-based company called Steriliz, LLC, and is deployed after a room is cleaned and sterilized with standard techniques. It can effectively reduce the pathogens that cause hospital-acquired infections by destroying hard-to-kill microorganisms. Its UV-C light, with wavelengths between 200-280 nanometers, penetrates the thin wall of a small microscopic organism and destroys its nucleic acids. This disrupts the DNA structure and either kills it or renders it unable to reproduce, and therefore harmless.

Controlled remotely by an associate from Environmental Services, the technology can disinfect a standard patient room in eight minutes. It measures, records and reports, providing real-time, online data access and analysis. Laura Hernandez of Environmental Services says the system is a valued weapon in fighting infections. “When patients see the UV light and manual cleaning being done,” she said, “it reassures them that they are provided a safe environment.”