No Boarding Pass Required: How EVS Stops Germs in Their Tracks
What makes it difficult for you to clean and disinfect the environment the way you know it should be done?
Ask your EVS team that question.
Then stop talking.
Seriously.
Listen.
You may hear about rushed room turnovers, equipment no one is quite sure who owns, supplies that are not where they should be, clutter, staffing, unrealistic expectations, or the classic healthcare favorite:
“I thought the other department cleaned that.”
And suddenly, you are not just talking about housekeeping.
You are looking straight at your infection-prevention program.
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a LinkedIn poll asking who has the greatest opportunity to break the chain of infection in healthcare. EVS received the most votes.
Honestly, that tracks.
EVS professionals spend their days removing one of the things germs love most: the chance to catch a ride.
A hand touches a bed rail. A portable monitor rolls into the next room. A healthcare worker adjusts equipment at the bedside and moves on. And just like that, our microscopic passenger has transportation.
Room to room. Surface to hand. Equipment to patient. Patient to healthcare worker. Healthcare worker to the next surface.
They do not need a boarding pass.
They just need a ride.
That is why environmental cleaning and disinfection matter so much. Every properly cleaned and disinfected surface, and every correctly disinfected piece of equipment, is one less chance for a germ to catch a ride.
Germs Don’t Care About Throughput
A patient is discharged, and another patient is waiting for the bed.
The emergency department needs somewhere to send the next admission.
Surgery is waiting for the next case.
Everyone wants the room turned over.
Quickly.
Yet, cleaning and disinfection still have to be performed correctly.
There is a tremendous difference between asking someone to work efficiently and morphing into a system where speed begins competing with thoroughness.
If we expect EVS to help us prevent infections, we also have to give them the time, products, training, information, and organizational support necessary to do the job correctly.
Who Cleans What?
EVS does not clean everything in a patient-care environment. Responsibilities for cleaning and disinfecting equipment are often divided among EVS, nursing, respiratory therapy, procedural areas, and other departments.
And when those responsibilities are not clearly defined, communicated, and understood, things can get missed.
Who cleans the IV pump?
The portable monitor?
The wheelchair?
The glucometer?
The bladder scanner?
The commode?
The computer workstation?
The piece of equipment that rolled into the room for five minutes and then rolled right back out?
Depending on the facility, the answer may be EVS.
Or nursing.
Or respiratory therapy.
Or another department entirely.
The problem is not that responsibilities are divided. The problem starts when everyone assumes someone else already handled it.
Nursing thinks EVS cleaned it.
EVS thinks nursing cleaned it.
The equipment gets moved.
The next patient gets it.
And somewhere in the middle of all those perfectly reasonable assumptions, cleaning and disinfection never happened.
If two departments both think the other one cleaned it, the germ wins.
That is not an EVS failure. It is not a nursing failure.
It is a communication and systems failure.
Staff should be able to answer some very basic questions for every piece of shared patient-care equipment:
Who cleans it?
When is it cleaned?
What product is used?
What contact time is required?
And how does the next person know it has actually been cleaned?
If staff members give different answers to those questions, that's your opportunity for improvement.
EVS Cannot Do This Alone
Celebrating EVS Week gives us the opportunity to thank our EVS professionals. To recognize how hard they work, how much is expected of them, and how much more difficult our jobs would be without them.
They play a vital role in patient safety.
But breaking the chain of infection belongs to all of us.
Clinical staff need to understand their responsibilities for patient-care equipment.
Departments need clearly defined cleaning assignments.
Leaders need to make sure expectations are realistic.
Infection Prevention should help develop procedures, provide education, evaluate practices, share findings, and - most importantly - listen to the people actually doing the work.
When responsibilities overlap, we need to eliminate assumptions. Because “I thought someone else did it” is not much of an infection-prevention strategy.
Breaking the Chain
The person with the greatest opportunity to break the chain is simply the person responsible for the next step. If the next step is hand hygiene, that responsibility belongs to the person about to touch the patient. If the next step is disinfecting shared equipment, it belongs to whoever owns that task.
And if the next step is making sure a room is safe for the next patient, EVS is the critical link.
Every high-touch surface they clean, and every room they properly disinfect, removes another opportunity for transmission.
So during this EVS Week, absolutely thank your Environmental Services team. We all know how important they are to our safety and our patients' safety.
Cheers to an incredible group of healthcare professionals!
