Preventing Infection Through Hospital Design And Specification: GRP Doors vs Timber & Laminate
Date: Friday March 19, 2010Posted in: Health
There have never been more elements to consider when specifying doors in a hospital setting. With the increasing emphasis of contamination risk, HAI and infection control the pressure is on specifiers to ensure they choose doors whose performance is suited for each hospital environment.
Les Blennerhasset, the technical director of Dortek, one of the UK’s leading hygienic door suppliers to hospitals and healthcare centres, offers advice on how specifiers can increase infection control by using glass reinforced polyester (GRP) doors in hospital settings, rather than traditional wood and laminate ones.
“Traditionally, hospital doors have been painted wood or wooden cored laminate. However, because of increasing standards of hygiene and infection control, GRP is becoming the material of choice for the modern hospital designer, not only for high risk areas such as intensive care, pharmacy cleanrooms and operating theatres, but also for medium risk areas like recovery suites, laboratories and hydrotherapy pools.
The photos above illustrate some of the potential problems with laminate doors in some environments over the longer term. Both doors were taken from environments where they had been installed in a pharmaceutical company for 3 to 5 years and the bottom of both doors were then exposed to water for a 14 day period. The glue bonding the laminate door, (top) broke down as it’s timber based core rapidly swelled allowing the ingress of water and growth of mould. The GRP door (bottom), seamlessly moulded as a homogenous unit with no organic materials, was unaffected.
Manufactured from millions of glass fibre threads and polyester resin, GRP is a high technology engineering composite that produces a very strong, seamless door. GRP doors are created using a closed moulding process which produces a uniform product, with no holes, crevices or joints that could accommodate bacteria.
Timber or laminate doors may be adequate for non-critical areas such as corridors, waiting areas and general office space. In areas where cleanliness is of the utmost importance, however organic materials are not suitable. No one would consider using organic materials to make trolleys, benches or operating tables, and yet we still see doors manufactured with timber lippings, frames and vision panel surrounds in widespread use.
In hospitals, doors are in constant use, and over time can become damaged as trolleys manoeuvred in tight corridors inevitably hit both the door and its frame. Whilst this damage has traditionally been seen as an aesthetic concern, these days, the risk to infection control means that this damage needs to be dealt with immediately. Whereas timber and laminate doors may need replacing in this instance, GRP doors are far stronger, and can be easily restored should they be chipped or damaged.
Laminate and timber doors are both weaker and pose a greater hygiene risk than GRP doors, as chips and knocks can reveal organic materials below the surface that can foster bacteria. They are also much harder to clean and keep clean. Unlike their organic counterparts, which can be easily damaged by common cleaning chemicals such as disinfectant, VHP (vaporised hydrogen peroxide) and chlorine releasing agents, GRP doors produced by Dortek are designed to tolerate constant cleaning.
The risk of infection contamination in cleanroom areas means that hospital specifiers need to start to challenge the conventional thinking behind hygienic door specification in hospitals. They should follow the trend of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, which has already moved away from organic doors, replacing them with GRP as standard in most facilities.
Dortek are industry leaders in the manufacture and supply of hygienic door solutions to the international pharma and healthcare sectors. A selection of useful guides on hospital door specification and infection control in hospitals are available from its hygienic door systems website.
