Equipe de Limpeza Hospitalar no Contexto Pandêmico: Revisão de Escopo

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused fears in the population and, in the scientific community, the virus brings about questions that are being answered as the disease progresses. Some questions will probably only be answered after many years of coping with the disease. COVID-19 brought to light the importance of the hygiene and cleaning practices regarding surfaces and environments, whether they are domestic, commercial or health care facilities. In the hospital setting, we have sanitation professionals who act as agents in interrupting COVID-19's transmission chain. In view of that, the objective of this scoping review was to map the scientific production in relation to the hospital sanitation professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic. The search strategy was devised based on the PCC strategy, establishing the following research question: “What has been published on the hospital sanitation professionals in the COVID-19 pandemic context to the present day”? The searches were conducted in the following electronic databases: PubMed/MEDLINE, Web of Science, Scopus Preview, Embase, Cochrane Library, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), and Biblioteca Virtual da Saúde (BVS). For the research in the gray literature, a search was conducted in the Brazilian Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations, in Google Scholar and in Open Gray, with no filters applied. A search for unpublished studies was also performed, which included reading the references listed in each research study. A total of 153 studies were identified; of these, 24 were duplicated in the databases researched and 02 were not available in full. After reading the titles and abstracts, it was found that 02 were registered under different titles, although they were the same document. After applying the eligibility criteria, a sample consisting of 06 studies was obtained. The diverse scientific evidence indicates that cost reduction, involving outsourcing and reduction in the permanent collaborators of the cleaning team, has been associated with the increase in the number of in-hospital infections. This group is less compliant with the use of Personal Protective Equipment, such as gloves, face shields and N95/97 masks. The hospital sanitation professionals are among those with the highest chances of exposure to the COVID-19 virus, playing a special role in fighting against the pandemic. The high seroprevalence of COVID-19 in the sanitation professionals indicates that these workers can carry and disseminate the virus to the environment, the team and the patients.