Poor Mobile Phone Hygiene Guidelines in Hospitals

The recent study in Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene found that medical staff using mobile phones in hospitals help spread bugs through constant handling and poor cleaning habits.
Sample swabs were taken from the phones of 226 medical staff in the paediatric unit of Launceston regional hospital in Tasmania - ranging from medical students.
Participants were also interviewed over their cleaning regime and it was found that while about one-third did routinely clean their phone, only 21% used alcohol wipes.
Yee Foong, led the study as a medical student at the University of Tasmania, when he noticed there were no mobile phone hygiene guidelines.
"Computer screens get cleaned, computer keyboards get cleaned, everything gets cleaned, but because mobile phones are a personal thing nobody every thinks to clean them," he says.
The study showed 95 per cent of phones were colonised with bacteria such as skin flora, but only 5% contained pathogenic bacteria such as Staphylococcus aureus and coliforms.
Foong says because mobile phones are such an "integral part of most modern hospitals, guidelines for decontamination of mobile phones with alcohol wipes alongside adherence to other infection control procedures (i.e. hand hygiene) should be developed".
While he agrees patient and visitor phones might also contain harmful bacteria, he says clinicians are more often in close contact with patients.
"It then becomes another way of introducing disease and transmitting bacteria," he says.
Foong does not believe it will be difficult to turn the issue around.
"Only 21% of the participants used alcohol wipes on their phones so that number can be easily increased," he suggests.
Australian Hospital and Healthcare Bulletin has contacted the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care to determine if this will be addressed in the soon-to-be-updated Standards. We will keep you updated on their response