healthcare textiles and laundry section and the regulated medical waste section . The environmental services section addressed primarily the cleaning and disinfection of surfaces and other materials , and then there were the sections on air and water in the healthcare setting .”
Sehulster explains that once the expert content contributors developed what they felt were reasonable drafts of their respective sections , she and Chinn reviewed the material to ensure that a comprehensive approach to the content was taken and that the content reflected an evidence-based approach . She says this review work broadened her understanding of standards outside of the CDC , such as the AIA guidelines for the built environment .
“ Reviewing the ventilation and water issues , for example , you come to realize that there is much more to these topics that are not strictly medically related , but rather related to how you can manage these environmental building blocks to make them safe for patients and the healthcare workforce . With that I quickly gained a good working knowledge of ventilation requirements and strategies for the built environment , such as where you place walls and where you use carpeting or not , do you seal the building , or do you have open windows . These are elements most people don ’ t give any thought to , but the engineers and the building contractors do . Another thing is , how is your building set up relative to the outdoor weather ; you must consider air intakes for your building . Coming from strictly a cleaning and disinfecting background , all of a sudden , I became sensitized to these issues with air and water , which was an amazing part of the process .”
What many do not realize is the effort it took to create the actual document , as the Microsoft Office suite of software , for example , was not as widely used in the years prior to the release of the guideline .
“ What was interesting is during the time when I was in the document ’ s production period , and getting close to the point where it was going to be uploaded to the Internet and printed in the MMWR , several things happened ,” Sehulster recalls . “ First , I was hoping to get our IT person to take the file as I had prepared it , but he said it couldn ’ t be uploaded in WordPerfect , but rather he needed it in a Microsoft Word document . So , I spent about three months moving a paragraph at a time from WordPerfect to a Word document . Long before that happened , I had already come to the decision that if I were using this document and I needed to find an answer quickly , how could I do that ? So , I decided to add a table of contents , as well as an index . I had to tag keywords throughout the
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