That’s the question raised by a new quality improvement project published in the July issue of the American Journal of Infection Control, the official journal of the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC).
It is the latest report to find that healthcare providers rarely perform stethoscope hygiene between patient encounters, despite its importance for infection prevention. Infection control guidelines from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention state that re-usable medical equipment, such as stethoscopes, must undergo disinfection between patients.