Tork, Essity’s leading global professional hygiene brand, has partnered with global service provider Sodexo to sponsor a programme on Environment, Cleaning and Decontamination (ECD) to promote infection prevention protocols.
Hosted by the Infection Prevention Society, the first conference in the programme featured talks and sessions led by industry experts.
About 150 delegates signed up for the inaugural event, which was held in Northampton, UK, in November. The aim of the day was to build on healthcare professionals’ infection prevention knowledge and ensure safer outcomes. The capacity event was attended by healthcare practitioners of varying levels of experience, as well as AHCP members and public interest professionals.
Sodexo’s Healthcare Director of Strategy, Simon Lilley, said: “The Environment, Cleaning and Decontamination conference is a new IPS educational pillar designed to help healthcare practitioners to develop expertise and create safer environments. We were delighted to join Essity in sponsoring this pivotal event and in doing so, helping to create a network in which the infection control message could be spread more widely.”
Topics for discussion included: ‘People and Cleaning’; ‘An Introduction to Medical Device Decontamination’, and ‘Hand and Surface - discussing the thorny subject of the 5th moment when hands and surface collide’.
The speakers were Jon Otter, Director of Infection Prevention and Control at the Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust; Peter Hoffman, Consultant Clinical Scientist at Public Health England; Daniel Pitcher, Founder of Water Hygiene Centre; and Karren Staniforth, Scientific Lead for Infection Prevention and Control for Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust with Martin Kiernan, Clinical Fellow.
Chairing the panel was Lisa Butcher, Vice President of the IPS and Lead Nurse for IPC and Decontamination Lead at the Oxford University NHS Foundation Trust. She commented: “We wanted to offer the Infection Prevention community a platform on which they could collaborate, share and learn advanced skills in environment, cleaning and decontamination. The event was highly successful in achieving that.”
Effective surface cleaning and hand hygiene are both important planks of any infection prevention programme. Thomas Bergin, Marketing Director, Healthcare at Essity Professional Hygiene, added: “We are extremely proud to be sponsoring this IPS educational pillar to continue to support in the quest to deliver infection prevention education to existing and new IPS members. At Essity we are passionate about helping to reduce healthcare-associated infections in order to achieve positive patient outcomes.
“This we achieve through training, continual innovation and correct product systems to create efficiencies in patient care and patient wellbeing.”
Tork manufacturer Essity and global service provider Sodexo first united to launch the ECD programme earlier in the year. Quarterly workstreams will be held over the coming months to build on the learning and information sharing.
