Reducing the risk of mouth-to-mouth transmission of pathogens via re-usable, machine-read parking tickets: an observational cohort study

Groves, Jeremy; Church, Helen; Holland, Diane; Thompson, Naomi

Abstract

The car parks at the study hospital are accessed using re-usable, machine-read tickets. In the initial phase of this study, 598 staff members were observed entering the car park, and 21.6% of them put their parking ticket in their mouth. Ultraviolet dye was used to demonstrate card-to-card cross-contamination. Swabs of the ticket machine yielded commensal bacteria: coagulase-negative staphylococci and a Bacillus sp. After placing a poster on the ticket-reading machine highlighting the potential risk of infection, a further 1366 observations demonstrated a significant and persistent decline in the proportion of staff who put their ticket in their mouth (P<0.001).

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: May 31, 2017
• Online Publication Date: Jun 8, 2017
• Publication Date: Dec 1, 2017
• Deposit Date: Apr 21, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 24, 2020
• Journal: Journal of Hospital Infection
• Print ISSN: 0195-6701
• Electronic ISSN: 1532-2939
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 97
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 430-432
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2017.05.027
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4322460
• Publisher URL: https://www.journalofhospitalinfection.com/article/S0195-6701(17)30321-3/fulltext