When you’re operating an air ambulance, cleaning and disinfection of the aircraft would be a crucial part of your maintenance process. This decontamination process is essential for protecting both your air ambulance crew and your patients. So you might want to improve how you decontaminate your air ambulance transport vehicles to ensure the safety of everyone involved.
Checklist for Decontaminating Air Ambulance Transport Vehicles
Air ambulance decontamination needs to be thorough so as to reduce the risk of infections and diseases. Here are some of the basic steps you need to take:
- Use the right equipment – Decontamination of air ambulance vehicles can be time-consuming and complicated. So you’ll need to use a disinfecting equipment to ensure that the process is done more effectively and efficiently. Before you invest in one, make sure you choose equipment that’s easy to operate so you don’t have to spend more time in training your staff.
You should also consider the cost per use and evaluate the cost of all replacement parts and consumable supplies. It’s crucial that you evaluate various other aspects such as how effectively it eliminates pathogens, how quick the turnaround time is, and whether it has any limitations or shortcomings.
- Promote the use of new PPE – Advise your staff members not to wear the same PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) while decontaminating the air ambulance as they did when they were in contact with the patient. This could re-contaminate the areas they’re trying to clean, resulting in ineffective decontamination.
- Promote the use of fresh cot linens – After every patient, your air ambulance transport crew needs to change the cot linens. And they should do so after the clean the mattress using a disinfectant. This is because the porous material of cloth linen could allow microbes to infect the cot mattress.
