Member Article

Vernacare partners with University College London Hospitals to improve infection control

University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has replaced traditional bed pan washing with the Verncare System of hygienic human waste disposal at its University College Hospital (UCH) site.

This is helping to improve standards of infection prevention, free up nurses’ time for frontline patient care, and improve environmental performance.

The Trust has installed 70 Vortex pulp disposal units across all hospital wards. This involved replacing plastic receptacles with a range of Vernacare’s single-use solution, including urinals, bedpans and washbowls. After each use, the products are placed in a disposal unit that breaks them down into a fine watery slurry, before discharging to drain.

John Swanson, Senior Infection Control Nurse, said: “We introduced Vernacare’s disposal system at UCH because it is a best practice method of infection prevention. It is a key element in our Trust wide C. diff reduction campaign. The response from nursing staff has been extremely positive. It’s far quicker and more hygienic than the bedpan washer system we were using. Vernacare have helped train all staff in using the machines and their engineers provide us with ongoing maintenance and support, which ensures that any machine downtime is minimised.”

Estates Manager Stephen Bagot, who chaired the installation project team, said: “The move to the single-use method was led by the infection control agenda. Having used Vernacare’s Vortex model at other sites we were happy with its performance and the fact that the waste is thoroughly macerated, therefore doesn’t cause blockages. For this reason it was a logical decision to specify the Vernacare system at UCH. It uses less energy than the bedpan washer system and runs on a cold water cycle, so it also makes sense from an environmental perspective.”

The UK manufacturing business, based in Lancashire, developed the Vernacare System of hygienic patient toileting 50 years ago. Today, Vernacare provides the largest range of medical pulp products to the NHS and has held the BSI kitemark since 1999. The company’s stringent quality control measures ensure superior leak-proof product performance and the prevention of malfunction to pulp disposal equipment. These high quality standards are evidenced by the fact that the company had just 0.0007% complaints last year from the 140 million pulp items supplied.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Vernacare .