Cell Phones: Potential Vectors for C. diff?

Barley Chironda, RPN, CIC, infection control specialist at Clorox Healthcare, explains how cell phones and smart devices can potentially serve as a vector for C. diff.

Interview Transcript (modified slightly for readability):

“Most phone recommendations right now, if you look at cleaning instructions for your phone or if you look at the tablets that are now going into the health care space, they don’t really give approval to use the hospital-grade approved disinfectants, because hospital-grade disinfectants tend to be created to do more to the bacteria. And so, when those are used on your phones and other smart devices, it can void your warranty and it can do other things that might be problematic.

At the end of the day, when you start thinking about it, you’ve got a patient who’s in the room that’s vulnerable, but with a pathogen like Clostridium difficile, and the recommendations say that you need to use sporicides and other grade disinfectants that are approved for those bacteria, and so, anything going into that room needs to be able to handle those disinfectants, but that does not seem to be the case on a day-to-day basis.”