Northwestern Memorial Hospital

While hospital administration was encouraging its employees, patients and visitors to do their part to prevent the spread of viruses, Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Director of Facilities Engineering, David Stout, was also beginning his own campaign – a major hospital refurbishment program that would include equipment and product upgrades to the hospital’s restrooms. “A primary focus has been reducing maintenance needs while improving sanitation in the hospital’s hundreds of staff and public washrooms,” says Stout. “As washrooms are renovated, we’re installing equipment and materials that are much easier to maintain, have longer life spans and keep the restrooms sanitary,” he said.

Going into the refurbishment project, Stout and his team were faced with daily restroom plumbing and maintenance issues related to paper towels. “The paper towels were getting flushed down the low-flow toilets, causing blockages,” said Stout. “The continuous plumbing calls combined with the high levels of restroom maintenance were taking up a considerable amount of time and costly resources. That’s when we got serious about looking into heated air electric hand dryers.” What’s more, Stout said that damp, used paper towels were regularly piling up in and around bathroom trash receptacles. Left unattended, dirty paper towels can create a breeding ground for bacteria. A study published by the European Cleaning Review affirms that, “unless paper towel waste is regularly cleaned [up], it can be a lasting source of bacteriological infection” (September 1994).

DEBUNKING HYGIENE MYTHS

Since proper hand hygiene is among the most important steps hospital staff can take to prevent infections in patients, the facilities engineering team looked into a number of electric hand drying options and then consulted with the NMH Infection Control Board on which electric dryer model would be the most hygienic hand dryer. As high-speed, energy-efficient hand dryers have grown in popularity over the last eight years, so have the scare tactics used by the industry’s competitors, touting dryer hygiene as a concern. “There is a lot of confusion and misinformation about the use of hand dryers in healthcare facilities,” said William Gagnon, vice president of marketing and key accounts, Excel Dryer, Inc. “Over the last 40 years, numerous scientific researchers have validated the hygienic safety of heated air as a drying medium. These independent, third party studies were conducted with careful methodology at major academic or medical institutions.”

In 2000, Dr. Franklin R. Cockerill III and his colleagues at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota conducted a randomized trial to determine the effects of four hand drying methods for removing bacteria from washed hands. In a year-long study of 100 people who volunteered to have their hands contaminated with bacteria, researchers found that hand washing got rid of the same amount of germs regardless of drying style. Results were reported in Mayo Clinic Proceedings (75:705 – 708). Scientist P.D. Meers and K.Y. Leong’s letter to the Journal of Hospital Infection stated “[There is] no bacteriological reason to exclude [hand dryers] from the clinical areas.”

While high-speed hand dryers are regarded as a hygienic hand drying choice in facilities around the world, facility managers should research their options carefully, as all hand dryers are not created equal. Manufacturer designs vary between a traditional – with the hands positioned under the air outlet or a trough-style – in which the user puts his/her hands into a trough like area or enclosure.