Introducing Robbie Blackwood - Managing Director schülke UK.

When you’ve spent your working life in both clinical and commercial healthcare settings, where do you go next? The answer for Robbie Blackwood was a move earlier this year to become MD of schülke UK, but what drives Robbie? What is his vision for healthcare and where does schülke fit into this?

He explains why he made the move and how he sees the future:

“Having spent many years working in the NHS, I know from experience just how critical infection prevention (IP) is. It impacts on the lives, health and wellbeing of staff and patients. When it’s done well, effective IP strategies save lives, reduce length of hospital stay and improve quality of life.

With both a growing and an ageing population, demands on the NHS are only set to increase. Yet, by their very nature, hospitals inevitably host many pathogens and patients are particularly vulnerable to infection. Diseases like COVID-19 and more recently Monkeypox have put the spotlight firmly on the need for robust infection prevention policies.

I believe that schülke is uniquely positioned to support healthcare institutions provide the safest possible environment for patients. Working together we can provide the products, the training and the support needed to help reach the highest standards of hygiene and cleanliness.

Our online training modules for healthcare professionals cover all aspects of infection control. They are evidence based, CPD accredited and cover topics from cleaning surfaces to understanding EU Norms. We are constantly adding to and updating our training packages. Videos are produced on a regular basis to help improve practice. In our latest one, we worked closely with the Complex Wounds Clinic in London to show how octenisan Wash Mitts can help improve patient care. It is by collective collaboration between industry and the NHS that we can facilitate change for the better.

The schülke product range is unique in the diversity of its offering; from hand hygiene to wound care and surface cleaning to processing high value equipment, we offer the highest quality infection prevention range. Our products are certified and manufactured to globally recognised gold standards, meaning our customers can trust a schülke product to do exactly what it promises.

As a company, we do not have a culture of resting on past achievements, for the past 130 years we have constantly pursued innovation and improvements. There is an incredibly exciting pipeline of new products on the way – more about those at a later date.

For now we’ll focus on remaining passionate about infection prevention whilst retaining integrity in all that we do and all that we offer. Through our partnerships we’ll continue to pursue innovation and help drive up standards of patient care.“