Devising a strategy to deliver safe water to thousands of outlets spread across numerous buildings is always going to be a challenge, so how do you navigate your way through a bewildering labyrinth of sometimes contradictory guidance documents?
Is there, in fact, simply too much guidance? Posing this question at a recent one-day conference on waterborne infections in healthcare facilities, Paul Nolan, authorised water engineer (AE), and operations manager for PFI provider, Lend Lease, took delegates through a review of the latest guidance and regulations, as Susan Pearson reports.
Held at the Merseyside Maritime Museum, Liverpool, the conference was one of a regular series of free educational ‘MasterClasses’ on preventing proliferation of waterborne pathogens in healthcare facilities sponsored by Pall Medical. Drawing on his many years of water management experience, Paul Nolan discussed some of the anomalies in current documents on water hygiene and safety, and gave suggestions on which advice to follow. He said: “We have to find a way to be safe, and we have to be legally compliant,” he said, “but in my opinion, the amount of guidance out there is crazy.”
Further presentations at the conference focused on some of the specific practicalities of providing water free of waterborne pathogens, such as Legionella and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, to the patients most vulnerable to these infections. Water safety plans, the relevance of new rapid DNA methods for assessing presence of Legionella, and the use of point-of-use (POU) filtration, were highlighted in particular. The meeting was chaired by Dr John Cunniffe, consultant microbiologist at the Wirral University Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.
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