Qualities of Hospital Curtain Fabric
Hospital curtain fabric plays a significant role in the hygiene and safety of hospital cubicle curtains, so it is important to understand what qualities to look for. These include antimicrobial properties, fire resistance, stains resistance, and proper length.
Medical privacy curtains are used to separate patient rooms from other patients, staff and visitors. They can also be used to prevent unauthorized access to equipment or services.
While hospitals are continuously working to reduce the number of microbial pathogens that are transmitted through touch, many germs are still transferred to and from surfaces, including hospital curtains. Often, the transmission of these germs is due to inadequate hand washing by health care professionals and other staff. This can be especially true with bedside curtains, which are often touched by the hands of the healthcare workers who move in and out of the patient room.
To protect patients and hospital staff from microbial infections, the fabrics used in medical curtains must meet stringent standards for infection control and flame retardance. These requirements are set by national health standards and British standard BS5867 for drapery materials.
In addition to meeting these requirements, hospital curtain fabric must also be easy to clean, allowing staff to wipe them down frequently to remove smears and spills from contact surfaces in the room. These fabrics should be machine washable, making them more convenient to use than dry-clean only alternatives. They should also be odor resistant, so that they do not leave a bad smell after being cleaned.
During the manufacturing process, fabric must be treated with antimicrobial agents that can kill bacteria and other microorganisms. This is particularly important for fabric that will be used in areas of the hospital where patients are being treated with antibiotics. This includes surgical areas and isolation rooms. This is because these areas are likely to have high concentrations of microbial organisms that can cause infections in hospitalized patients with weak immune systems.
The fire-retardant quality of hospital curtain fabric is a critical requirement, as it must meet the requirements of national and state fire codes to ensure that healthcare facilities are safe in the event of a fire. To meet the fire code requirements, a fabric must have a flame spread rate of no more than 100 square feet per minute and a char length of less than six inches. This is a rigorous test that most fabrics can meet, but there are also some fabrics that do not pass this fire-retardant test.
The color of the hospital curtain is not as important as the material, as long as it is not red, which is known to be a highly infectious color. For this reason, many hospital managers choose to use blue or green privacy curtains, which are not as offensive to the eye as red. In addition to being easy on the eyes, these colors are a popular choice because they help with sleep and relaxation in hospital patients.