What is it about?

Commodes are in use constantly throughout healthcare facilities. Therefore commode surfaces are constantly handled, and any pathogens present have the potential to be transferred to not only other surfaces but also, more importantly, to patients, thus compromising patient safety. In order to examine the effectiveness and thoroughness of cleaning commodes an audit was undertaken to assess compliance with evidence-based practice.

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Why is it important?

The audit results confi rmed an issue that the authors had long suspected. That is, that commodes allocated to individual patients are not always cleaned after every use. Using adenosine triphosphate (ATP) bioluminescence as an indicator of organic soiling also demonstrated that commodes that were considered clean were not always cleaned to a high standard.

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This page is a summary of: Lifting the lid: a clinical audit on commode cleaning, Journal of Infection Prevention, May 2010, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/1757177410365945.
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