Disinfecting in-hospital tablet computers twice a day can substantially reduce bacterial contamination, according to a study published in Antimicrobial Resistance & Infection Control.
Researchers sampled tablet computers in a general internal medicine tertiary care setting. They studied the change in bacterial contamination on the tablets before after the introduction of a mandatory disinfection program that involved disinfecting the tablets twice a day.
Of 168 tablet samples, researchers identified bacterial contamination in 149.
The twice-a-day disinfection intervention was associated with substantially less overall bacterial contamination.
Normal skin bacteria was the most commonly identified species of bacteria, and Staphylococcus aureus, found in 11 percent of samples, was the most frequent potential pathogen.