With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting almost every country in the world, people are worried about many things when it comes to the virus. How is it spread? How easy is it to get infected? How long does the virus stay on surfaces or equipment?
That last question is something that all healthcare professionals are trying their best to answer. Unfortunately, though, the best way to practice safety with the virus is to keep all tools and equipment as sterile as possible in all health facilities, which of course includes eye care facilities.
So what’s the best way to do that? Here are a few simples things you can do to keep the tools at your eye care facility clean and safe for all of your patients.
1. Use Disposable Tips
A common practice in eye exams is checking the fluid pressure to asses the health of a patient’s eye. During this test, you would use a tonometer to gently touch the surface of the patient’s eye.
Can you imagine the germs that are now sitting on the tip of it from touching the patient’s eyes, even for a short period of time? Along with worries of how the virus is spread, you have everyday eye diseases and infections to worry about, such as ocular herpes, pink eye and stys.
The most common way to disinfect tools that touch the eye is with sterilized cleaning wipes. But the easier and safer way to handle the situation would be to use disposable tips on your tonometer.
Icare's disposable tips insert into ic100 and ic200 tonometers and are what make contact with the eye. They are sterile, single-use and disposable.
That means they essentially remove the chance of cross contamination between patients. You practice safer disinfection, and your patients have almost zero chance of contracting an infection from somewhere else. It sounds like a win-win to us.
2. Wear Face Masks and Gloves
If you don’t have medical-grade masks to wear, all staff members should at minimum wear cloth masks. You can make these at home or order them in bulk from various places. You also could use disposable masks.
Your facility also should consider whether or not you want your patients to wear masks as well. If you do use cloth masks, make sure they are snug to the face but don’t cut off the oxygen supply. They also should be washed regularly.
When it comes to wearing gloves, they should cover the entire hand and wrist and be snug as well. You should use new gloves with each patient and be very careful when removing the gloves so as not to touch another surface or your hands to the possibly infected surface.
3. Stay on a Cleaning Schedule, and Educate
Regularly clean all areas of your facility, including the floors, windows and items around the waiting area such as chairs and armrests. Clean surfaces with warm water and soap first, then use EPA-registered disinfectants such as Lysol or Clorox wipes.
Make sure to wear gloves while cleaning and taking out the trash. Also, make sure to educate your staff to make sure they understand what they should be cleaning and how often. It only takes one person to not follow directions for things to go south.
Additional Steps
The bottom line is, it’s essential that professionals in all healthcare facilities take the most action they can to keep their tools and facilities clean. All staff should be taking steps to take care of themselves and watching for symptoms of sickness such as chills, fatigue and fever.
And when it comes to your eye equipment, always remember ICare is here to help. With our sterile, convenient and disposable tips, we can help your facility get through this pandemic a little easier.
On top of that, we offer other various tools and products that can help improve your business now and in the future.
