Water consumption during pre-operative hand sanitisation: A qi project for the post-COVID-19 world

Abstract

Context: Water is a scarce and precious resource in many parts of the world. The COVID-19 pandemic has reemphasised the importance of handwashing and sanitisation. The world is moving back to opening the surgical procedures once again. Aims: The aim is to analyse the impact of water consumption and the cost associated with surgical hand sanitisation. Settings and Design: Quality Improvement Project. Subjects and Methods: This is a quality improvement project; members of the surgical team were asked to scrub and amount of flowing water for 5 min was collected in a measuring bucket. The hospital sinks are equipped with either manual or automatic motion sensor taps. This was reflected in the total amount of water and cost that was calculated for the operative cases of 2019. Statistical Analysis Used: Descriptive statistics, calculating the mean. Results: Three minutes was the average scrub time for the six participants. Thirty litres of water were consumed using a manual tap with continuous flow for 5 min. In comparison just 7.5 L of water were consumed using a motion sensor tap. A total of 7060 cases were operated in the year of 2019 with an annual cost that ranged from 1.8 to 7.5 million United Arab Emirates Dirham. Conclusions: The surgical handwashing technique is associated with a considerable amount of water. Motion sensor taps have the advantage to decrease wasting with water flowing only during actual washing. Techniques to decrease that amount are available and can be considered to preserve the water.