A sluice, or ‘dirty’ room, is the room in a hospital where used patient items end up. Soiled items such as bedpans, catheters, wash bowls and used dressings are disposed of in a sluice room. The steps below are an illustration of how to think about your sluice room and necessary steps to maximise infection control.
Why is sluice room organisation important?
Sluice rooms have a high volume of contaminated items passing through every day. Harmful infectious bacteria and viruses associated with patient blood, soil and fluids are treated or disposed of in sluice rooms. These rooms are therefore high-risk sites for cross contamination or redistribution of bacteria to other patients. Designing an effective and safe sluice room is an essential way to manage infection pathways and improve working conditions for nursing staff.
1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of your existing system?
Coordinate between the nursing team, maintenance staff and infection control team to identify what is working well and any existing problems or constraints. This information can help you to design an effective space.
2. Ventilation, walls and floors
Like other hospital rooms, sluice rooms should be well ventilated to combat aerosols. Walls and floors should be easy-to-clean and preferably have no recesses in which bacteria can collect. Laminate and vinyl are therefore preferable to tiles.
3. Think about ‘sluice room flow’
It is important to think about the directions travelled around the room. The purpose of the sluice room is to dispose of soil and leave clean, and this should be reflected in the how the room is used. Sluice rooms should then have a ‘flow’ in which dirty substances are eliminated first, followed by equipment cleaning. Near the exit, rooms should have handwashing stations and clean device storage.
* If using macerators, this is not necessarily required.
4. Small spaces
Even the tiniest of rooms can be an effective sluice with some creative thinking. For example, some healthcare providers have a sluice room for the management of waste and a ‘clean cupboard’ where supplies are kept. In other areas where this is not possible, think about the most space-efficient solutions. Macerators and washers are available in compact options which could be installed in individual patient rooms. Pulp bedpans are easily stacked so can be more easily stored than reusables, and less space is required for cleaning processes. Shelving units can maximise wall space. These are just some examples of effective and safe ways to design sluice solutions. For individualised support, please contact us here.
5. Entry and exit
Door handles are commonly identified as a high-risk bacteria carrier. Consider how you can minimise this in your design: studies have found that push plates have five times less bacterial contamination than pull handles (Wojgani et al. 2012). Better still, could RFID automated doors be a viable solution?
To summarise…
Sluice rooms are a crucial aspect of hospital infrastructure. They have a key role in managing offensive and contaminated waste and ensuring the safety of patients, staff and visitors across the facility. Thinking about your own facility and evaluating where improvements could be made is the first step to improving processes. Does your sluice room have a dirty to clean ‘flow’? Are there any opportunities to reduce infection exiting the sluice room?
Further reading:
Wojgani, Hedieh, Catherine Kehsa, Elaine Cloutman-Green, Colin Gray, Vanya Gant, and Nigel Klein. “Hospital Door Handle Design and Their Contamination with Bacteria: A Real Life Observational Study. Are We Pulling against Closed Doors?” PLoS ONE 7, no. 10 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0040171.
