Patient Hygiene

Water basins used for wash­ing patients are wide­ly described in the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture as a con­firmed risk fac­tor for catheter-asso­ci­at­ed uri­nary tract infec­tions and hos­pi­tal-acquired infec­tions trans­mit­ted dur­ing wash­ing [1]. An alter­na­tive that elim­i­nates water basins, and there­by the asso­ci­at­ed risk fac­tor, is the use of ded­i­cat­ed patient cleans­ing wipes.

SAGE (Stryk­er) wipes are pack­aged in reseal­able packs of 8, allow­ing for full-body patient cleans­ing accord­ing to the instruc­tions on the pack­age. The wipes can be heat­ed in a microwave, and the Essen­tial Bath series (7413‑X) has an addi­tion­al insu­lat­ing lay­er inside the pack­ag­ing to help main­tain the tem­per­a­ture of the wipes. The cloths are made of a poly­ester-cel­lu­lose blend and are impreg­nat­ed with a no-rinse solu­tion con­tain­ing ingre­di­ents such as aloe extract and vit­a­min E.

The SAGE head wash cap is designed for wash­ing a patien­t’s head with­out the need for rins­ing. The cap has a two-lay­er construction—the out­er lay­er min­i­mizes the risk of wet­ting the pil­low or bedding—and is moist­ened with a solu­tion of gen­tle sham­poo and con­di­tion­er. It con­tains puri­fied water (USP-com­pli­ant) and is latex-free.

[1] Stone S, et al., Removal of bath basins to reduce catheter-asso­ci­at­ed uri­nary tract infec­tions. Plakat przed­staw­iony pod­czas APIC 2010, Nowy Orlean, LA, lip­iec 2010 r.