In ways big and small, employees are advocating for more sustainable products and practices in their work environment. In the case of the Children’s Cancer Centre, a recent swap to a waterless surgical scrub solution has significantly reduced waste and water consumption in its surgical scrub hand hygiene process.
“Skinman®90 saves water usage and single-use cotton huck towels,” says Kate Vandenberg, Nurse Practitioner, Paediatric Oncology, Children’s Cancer Centre, Reef Ward 4C, Monash Children’s Hospital.
“We have saved about 200 huck towels and thousands of litres of water a week by swapping from chlorhexidine 4%, to Skinman®90.”
Reef Ward 4C at Monash Children’s Hospital recently installed dispensers for Skinman®90, a waterless surgical scrub solution. With the support of colleagues and the Engineering team, Skinman®90 is now readily available and a preferred method in surgical and sterile hand hygiene in the ward.
Kate is one of the ward’s employees supportive of the change.
“For years, the Children’s Cancer Centre has been performing lumbar punctures for intrathecal chemotherapy on approximately 60 children per month. As lumbar punctures are a sterile procedure, we are required to perform a surgical scrub.”
“Traditionally, we have performed our surgical scrubs with water and soap containing chlorhexidine 4%. In using the water and chlorohexidine 4% solution, we are required to use a sterile huck towel to dry our hands, which is then thrown away after its single use.”
The huck towels used in surgical hand hygiene methods are made of cotton, making them excellent products for drying hands, wiping down instruments after sterilisation and a wide range of cleaning applications. However, reliance on these single-use towels becomes a sustainability issue.
Based on her experience, Kate estimates that 80-90% of employees are using Skinman®90 over soap and water surgical hand hygiene methods for surgical scrubs.
Where appropriate, both soap and water methods and waterless scrubs are accepted in our clinical practice for surgical hand hygiene. Using a waterless scrub like Skinman®90 involves the application of the solution undiluted on the skin, keeping moist for at least 90 seconds, and then allowing it to air dry. In contrast, the soap and water method requires an initial 5 minutes of scrubbing and the additional use of water and towels. With either method, a social hand wash prior to scrubbing is required as the first wash of the day.
More information about hand hygiene solutions can be found in our Hand Hygiene Procedure on Prompt. Any areas interested in changing their hand hygiene products should discuss this with Infection Prevention prior to commencing as this may not be appropriate for all areas.
Surgical scrubbing should not replace routine or aseptic hand hygiene.
Approved by Paul Butler, Interim Executive Director, Office of the Chief Executive