Croxton Lodge
The Brief
Leicestershire based Croxton Lodge is a specialist hospital which assesses, treats and rehabilitates adults with learning difficulties.
The hospital offers a safe and structured environment for the treatment of individuals with challenging behaviour and complex needs that aren’t being met by other medical institutions. The centre not only caters for long-term patients in its 30 bed unit, but also holds regular day service sessions, which seek to enhance life skills and the possibility of patients moving on to community based living.
When the Melton Mowbray based unit opened the brand new premises last year they made strategic and operational plans to help the hospital remain MRSA free. They looked to identify a method of stopping the spread of diseases at the source where cross-contamination commonly occurs.
The Solution
Cross-contamination remains one of the main methods of spreading the bacteria and not only occurs through healthcare professional-to-patient contact, but even through patient records being handled by medical staff.
To help minimise this cross-contamination Croxton Lodge identified Kalamazoo’s Touch Safe™ range as a resource to help defend against these superbugs.
Croxton Lodge selected a range of Touch Safe™ stationery and the Karefile frames. They have an integrated additive containing silver ions, which instantly starts to kill microbes on contact.
The Result
Charge Nurse Katie Deedes, a member of the Infection Control Nurse Association and Croxton Lodge’s Lead Nurse for Infection Control, said “Despite huge efforts to reduce the deadly MRSA bacteria it is still prevalent in many hospitals but we had an opportunity from the off-set to make Croxton Lodge a bacteria free zone.”
Patients are referred to Croxton Lodge in a variety of ways including NHS/ Healthcare, social and private services throughout the country. Parent company, Castlebeck, already has units throughout England and Scotland and has been operating for 20 years. All buildings at the hospital are subjected to rigorous monthly internal audits, known as PSR checks (Periodic Service Reviews) to combat the life threatening bug so there has to be constant daily protection in an environment with a high level of human contact.
“Even the most careful hospital staff risk passing the bacteria through essential accessories like case note folders, care records and charts which have to be handled with routine frequency,” Charge Nurse Katie Deedes explained.
“The products give us peace of mind and solved the problem of decontaminating products which are constantly handled but are unpractical to sterilise on a daily basis. We would without doubt recommend Kalamazoo’s products to other hospitals,” concluded Katie Deedes.
The Touch Safe™ trial was independently tested and verified by LawLabs in Birmingham, the Medical Institute for Microbiology at the University of Milan, the Virology Institute at the University of Catania and the SIK Institute in Gothenburg. Product approval has been granted by the EU Biocide Directive and the US’s Environmental Protection Agency and Food and Drug Administration.
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