Infection control and reusable gowns/drapes

Hi Amy,

  Is Infection Control the issue?  The law changed about 2000; any reprocessing of gowns and drapes made the reprocessor the legal manufacturer with all associated liability.  Once you have converted to single-use, how can you going to convince your Hospital Insurance to revert and take on this risk?  Or, if you want to use a third-party supplier, will it be cost-effective?

  Also, your avatar is upside down.  Is this a thing?

  Best Wishes,

Gerard.

Hi Gerard, thanks for your reply. We already use a mixture in my trust so I want to increase the proportion of reusables over disposable and I think evidence of infection control would be useful for this in some surgical specialties. 
 

Yes I know it's upside down, I'm not sure why. I haven't got around to deleting it and uploading a new one! 
 

Apologies for spamming this thread but this sounds like an excellent topic to discuss and see what is happening across the UK. Possibly a topic to be discussed at the next sharing hour? https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/sharing-hour-anaesthetic-theatre-sustain… 

Hello Amy,

I was wondering if you managed to find out any information regarding the infection control of reusable gown vs disposable. We are in the process of trying to implement these into our trust and would be excellent to have some infection control evidence to back this up.
Many Thanks

All gowns whether single use or reusable need to meet BS EN 13795 https://www.freestandardsdownload.com/bs-en-13795-1-2019-pdf-download.h… that covers standards of protection including microbial testing. There are also some studies that indicate that reusable gowns outperform single use:
- for protection, durability, water resistance and strength AJIC https://www.ajicjournal.org/article/S0196-6553(20)30929-9/fulltext ,
- with no measurable increased risk of infection IC&HE https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/infection-control-and-hospital-….