| Description |
The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of Foamaseptic, a non-hexachlorophene soap product, against gram-positive and gram-negative organisms as found on the hands of the nursing personnel of the Newborn Intensive Care Unit of a 284 bed hospital. The sample included a total of 23 nursing personnel. In this saitple, eleven were asked to use the Foamaseptic as their exclusive handwashing product in the nursery, and twelve were asked to continue using the hexachlorophene base soaps that were routinely used in the nursery. A second part of the study, although not a part of the hypothesis, was to investigate by means of a questionnaire the following variables 'which the investigator believed might have had some effects on the results of the study. The variables were: the number of children in the family of each subject, the number of house pets owned by the subjects, the shift and the minutes into the shift at which the cultures were taken and whether the subjects were working in the critical care or intermediate care nursery at the time of culturing. Differences between the Foamaseptic group and the hexachlorophene group were identified by means of a one-way analysis of variance. There were no statistically significant differences in regard to the number of organisms grown between the two groups on the base line data nor at any other time during the four weeks the study was being conducted. The data taken from this small sample indicated that while the Foamaseptic was on occasion as effective as the hexachlorophene soaps in controlling colonization, it was not more effective in reducing the number of organisms on the hands of the nursery personnel. There was no statistically significant difference between the subjects who used the Foamaseptic and those who used the hexachlorophene soaps. In fact, during one week of the study there was a marked rise in the number of colonies cultured from the hands of the subjects using the foam, which was not true for the hexachlorophene soaps. The bacterial growth was in no way affected by the type of soap used at hone by the subjects for handwashing, the time the culture was collected, the shift or nursery the subjects were working in, nor whether the subjects had children and/or pets at home. |
