Compliance Shark’s Missy Travis, Infection Prevention Consultant, shares her experience
Gregory Gicewicz founded Compliance Shark, in 2023. Their mission is to help combat Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs), through excellence in linen infection prevention compliance. Compliance Shark serves healthcare facilities including acute care hospitals, nursing homes, surgery centers and any other healthcare facility that requires linens for their patients. The company’s ultimate goal is to ensure that all healthcare linen is processed according to the highest standards of infection prevention and that it is protected at all stages so it is safe at the time of use for sick patients. The journey that healthcare linen takes is vast, with many hidden dangers along the way, from the hospital to the transport vehicles to the sorting, washing, drying, finishing, staging, and loading at the laundry and back to the hospital and ultimately to the patient room. This journey must be executed precisely to create a safe environment for the community’s most vulnerable.
To achieve its mission, Compliance Shark focuses on a range of elements that can go overlooked and undetected, potentially causing infection and disease if not addressed. Every point of contact matters, such as temperature control, employee hygiene at laundry plants, and functional separation every step of the way, to name all but a few. The company was co-founded by Gregory Gicewicz, an expert in linen/laundry infection prevention. Mr. Gicewicz has toured and inspected scores of healthcare laundries around the world, uncovering hundreds of hidden patient infection dangers concealed in the shadows.
Missy Travis is an infection prevention consultant (IPC) who has worked closely alongside Compliance Shark to achieve their goals to ensure the safety of communities, beginning in healthcare facilities such as hospitals. With over two decades of experience in the infection prevention industry in the US, beginning her journey working in a hospital as a staff nurse to entering the public health sector as an infection prevention specialist in 2003, Missy has since founded her own infection prevention firm, IP&C Consulting, dedicated to her role as an infection prevention consultant.
Here’s what Missy had to say.
Factors in infection prevention of healthcare linens that are often overlooked
IPCs work with clients helping them with their infection prevention programs, assisting them in their day-to-day function and help provide education. Missy found that healthcare linen is an area of infection which is too often overlooked as “I [also] didn't think about linen as a primary source for infection transmission in the past.” For the majority of Missy’s training and training courses in this field today, the focal point is largely on hard surfaces, with “limited recommendations and regulations specific to linen handling.” To a certain extent facilities and organizations are doing a good job, but the problem lies with the handling and storage of linens after they are processed because there are multiple factors that are harder to control such as the various handling points, explains Missy.
While more attention and expertise towards healthcare linens should be taken, knowledge related to this topic is “often obtained through experience, and depending on the type of facility, infection preventionists may not have direct exposure to linen management because it is completed at an off-site facility outside of clinics and hospitals.”
For example, at the start of Missy’s journey to becoming an IPC, she “had very limited experience in handling linen, so I felt intimidated by the linen management staff because of my lack of knowledge.” Therefore she was less likely to speak up about potential issues that are occurring, suggesting that this is a common occurrence amongst other inexperienced professionals in the field which is, in turn, impacting infection prevention of healthcare linens.
Healthcare linen risks seen on the frontlines
The most frequent healthcare linen risk Missy has encountered is the inappropriate storage of linens. In hospitals, nurses and other staff are constantly picking up linens whether this is bedding, towels or washcloths, and often they will take extra with them so they don’t run out when changing bedding or washing a patient. However, these extra linens “start to pose a risk for becoming contaminated because there is nowhere to store them in the patient’s rooms. You’ll see them piled up in the corner on the windowsill or on the back of the toilet because there’s no other space to place them.”
Missy recalled that during her time as a nursing assistant, she would gather clean linens from the storage room and carry them in her arms to a patient’s room. This is likely where linens often get contaminated because they are touching a nurse’s uniform and also their skin. She also confessed that she didn’t always clean her hands before gathering these linens like many other healthcare workers who are probably doing some of these practices early on in their careers too.
“In some situations even a family member could be going to get the linens for the patient, so there’s even less control over a family member’s clothing and hands as they may not know what types of things they’ve come into contact with.”
Additionally, another risk that often occurs is during the transportation of clean linens from the laundry plant to healthcare facilities, as they are not always completely covered during transportation which can lead to contamination.
Moreover, while it is difficult to directly assess the level of contamination, there are various possible touch points for clean healthcare linen before it reaches the patient or resident.
This can sometimes be a difficult topic to navigate because a nurse is solely responsible for their patients and thus is extremely busy. At the end of the day, they are doing the best they can to help those in need and do their job, which is why strict compliance processes, beginning with cultural and mindset shifts within organizations is key to lasting change.
Missy’s role with Compliance Shark
Source: AI image creation
As mentioned previously, although healthcare staff have some degree of training in infection prevention, some of the issue is disconnect because the linen is processed off site and the laundry plant employees are also not necessarily part of the organizations on the front lines, and vice versa, so on both sides “It’s kind of out of sight, out of mind.” But that is where Compliance Shark can come in to help because every part of the process matters.”
As an organization, Compliance Shark can aid current programs to help identify deficits as well as promote all of the current practices that are effective. Missy explains that “they can share valuable resources and ensure compliance with regulations and best practices. Also, since they speak the laundry language, they can help serve as a translator between the infection prevention and the laundry staff.”
Furthermore, Compliance Shark also brings the expertise related to laundry that infection preventionists are sometimes lacking. For example, “Gregory has vast experience working in the laundry field, so he looks at things through a different lens than I do as an infection preventionist. I think in most situations a multidisciplinary approach is beneficial. Anytime you are looking at risks in the environment, because other disciplines may notice things that you don't and vice versa. It facilitates a more complete evaluation in my opinion.”
Essentially Compliance Shark can serve as a middleman between the three different groups, being the end user - those working in the laundry facility, processing the linens (cleaning), those transporting the clean linens and finally the client, the healthcare facility - the staff using the linens. “However, all of these groups have different priorities, because the laundry facility is primarily focussed on processing the linens whereas the client’s priority is on saving a patient’s life, keeping the patient safe and providing clinical care.”
“We want to marry all these 3 groups and look at the complete continuation of care and ensure that they are all valuing infection prevention, no matter where they are, in which step of the process, that this is at the top of mind.”
After speaking with Missy, she also had some additional thoughts and advice for healthcare professionals:
This is the perfect time to evaluate your current processes and practices being the first of the year, because a lot of the time programs are holistically evaluated. For example, if a person feels as though they don’t have enough knowledge, they can begin developing a relationship with the laundry staff. Again, this is something which can be overlooked because while there are similar relationships with other partners in healthcare, the laundry department need to be included in the infection prevention process too.
If you need additional information, related to linen management, get help. There's nothing wrong with asking for help from people with more expertise and experience.I really think it helps you grow faster and improve your program and really brings about that multidisciplinary approach. Which ultimately is going to lead to better outcomes for our patients and residents.