Hospital Temperature Monitoring
Hospital environments require secure, 24/7 monitoring to maintain drugs, vaccines, blood/tissues, and critical medical equipment within specified temperature and humidity ranges. Environmental controls are critical for maintaining drug safety and efficacy. Humidity measurement can be especially challenging and important in surgical rooms, neonatal, and drug compounding areas.
Temperature monitoring systems are invaluable assets in hospitals and medical facilities. They are essential in maintaining the daily operations. Variations in temperature readings, even the smallest, can make the difference between life-saving medications and pharmaceuticals.
Temperature dictates the ability of viruses, bacteria and fungal spores to not only survive but to thrive as well, so temperature control in hospitals is important due to the frequency and transmission of these. Exposure is hazardous for all such organisms during their journey between hosts. Factors such as temperature, humidity, light and even pollutants can inactivate free-floating, airborne infectious organisms. Temperature is one of the most important factors affecting virus survival, as it can affect the state of viral proteins and the virus genome.
Hospitals and other medical facilities are responsible for storing and administering medications, food for patient care, maintaining the integrity of samples, and much much more. They need to do this all both efficiently and while holding to strict standards and guidelines.
Staff efficiency is key in hospitals and medical facilities. With so much consistently happening all at once there is little time for manually recording data. Not to mention the sheer number of items usually needing to be monitored. Logging items daily to ensure proper temperature can bring productivity to a halt.
Remotely monitoring and recording the temperature in these facilities is essential. It lets staff focus on the jobs they are trained to do, ensure all standards and guidelines are being upheld, and most importantly that all patients get the best and most safe care possible.
Hospital Patient Room Temperature Guidelines & Requirements
Temperature and Disease Spread
Safety is a big factor in proper temperature control. Bacteria and disease thrive in overly-warm conditions, and will spread quickly in improperly ventilated rooms. By carefully monitoring temperature and humidity, the risk of airborne diseases spreading can be reduced significantly. The recommended room temperature for hospitals and medical facilities ranges by season. In the Summer moths this temperature is recommended between 73.4°F and 80.6°F. In the Winter and cooler months temperature is recommended to be kept slightly lower with the range being 75.2°F to 78.8°F. Humidity is also important as it can effect bacteria and disease spread. Recommended humidity in hospitals is between 50%rh and 60%rh.
Air quality and ventilation systems can be used to curb the spread of germs and disease. Some hospitals use negative pressure rooms to treat patients with infectious diseases. The purpose of these, and the ventilation systems they use, is keeping the air from these rooms from getting out to the rest of the facility. If the air is reduced in infectious area of the hospital, and pumped out, a negative pressure forms in the rooms in the area. Usually when a door is opened air rushes out of a room, but in this circumstance the air moves from out to in, keeping the infectious air to the interior.
Temperature and Patient Comfort
At the very minimum the temperature control of a hospital directly links to patient comfort. Both cold and hot temperatures can be a huge issue, especially for patients such as the elderly or babies in the maternity ward. With proper investment in a quality HVAC system, along with temperature sensors and alerts, a comfortable temperature level can be maintained.
It is incredibly important to have proper temperature, ventilation, and air quality control in the healthcare sector. For an industry already facing so many issues, poor temperature and humidity levels shouldn’t be one of them.
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