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Keeping a Clean Veterinary Clinic
New online manual from OVC will help small-animal veterinarians stem disease spread among pets, people
BY ANDREW VOWLES
More than two out of three medical doctors fail to wash their hands between patients, according to an Ontario study released last year. Ask veterinarians about their hygiene and infection control practices, and you might get an even worse response, says Prof. Scott Weese, Pathobiology.
Helping small-animal veterinarians improve their practices and prevent infectious diseases from spreading among pets and people is the purpose of a new online manual developed at OVC.
Published in December, Infection Prevention and Control: Best Practices for Small Animal Veterinary Clinics shows how to design an infection control program and suggests basic practices to keep clinics clean.
The 70-page manual — believed to be the first of its kind for veterinary medicine — was written by Weese, pathobiology professor John Prescott, post-doc Maureen Anderson and second-year DVM student Jenny Montgomery.
“These are the first nationally available guidelines for all veterinarians,” says Prescott.
The new guidelines aren't mandatory, but the manual suggests how to improve procedures such as routine hygiene and cleaning of clothing and equipment, surgical practices, patient care and handling, and personal safety.
Aimed at clinic vets and staff members, it includes tables with precautions to follow until a disease is confirmed, as well as worksheets that help vets audit their practices from clinic design to dress-code policies.
“It's intended to be simple and helpful,” says Prescott.
And it's a needed resource, adds Weese. As concern rises over the spread of MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus) and other disease pathogens, more veterinarians need to pay attention to infection control basics, he says.
Few studies have looked at infection control practices in veterinary medicine, but Prescott says he'd give most vet clinics a seven or eight out of 10.
“We can always do better, and this manual will help in the process.”
Weese lectures on infection control in DVM courses. Along with graduate students, he plans to study practitioners' compliance with infection control and ideas for improving hygiene.
He has written about hand-washing practices on the “Worms and Germs” blog on safe pet ownership that he maintains with Anderson. (They also write about infectious diseases in horses at www.equIDblog.com.)
Anderson, a DVM graduate and former large-animal resident, co-ordinated a study published last year that found horse vets who routinely washed their hands between farm visits were less likely to transmit MRSA.
“People are expecting better health care for their animals,” says Prescott, pointing to growing worries over such threats as anti-microbial resistance and vulnerability to diseases among immuno-compromised animals.
“The manual helps people recognize that the University of Guelph is at the forefront of veterinary infectious disease control.”
The Guelph group received a grant from the Canadian Committee on Antibiotic Resistance, which published a similar document in 2007 on infection prevention and control in human health-care facilities.
The manual is endorsed by the Canadian Veterinary Medical Association and U of G's Centre for Public Health and Zoonoses. For an online copy, visit www.wormsandgermsblog.com and click on “Resources.”