Hygienic standards and requirements for specialized healthcare institutions. Nosocomial infections.
Specialized healthcare facilities, like ICUs, maternity wards, infectious disease hospitals, and dialysis centers, require strict hygiene to protect patients, staff, and visitors, and to prevent nosocomial infections. The main standards and requirements include:
- Locating the facility away from industrial or overcrowded areas
- Implementing zoning for clean, semi-clean, and contaminated areas, with isolation units for infectious patients
- Providing separate entrances and exits for staff, patients, and waste transport
- Ensuring adequate ventilation: 6–12 air changes per hour in wards and ≥12 in operating rooms
- Using HEPA filters in ICUs, ORs, and isolation rooms, with positive or negative pressure rooms as needed
- Supplying continuous safe water for drinking, washing, and sterilization, along with proper sewage and liquid waste treatment
- Maintaining smooth, non-porous surfaces for floors, walls, furniture, and equipment
- Sterilizing surgical and reusable instruments
- Segregating infectious, chemical, and general waste, with safe transport, storage, and disposal
- Providing hand hygiene stations, clean linen storage, staff changing rooms, and personal protective equipment.