There are so many different patients that come in and out on a daily basis. Especially in times like these, hospitals need to be more cognizant of how clean (or unclean) their environment is.
However, it’s not just the maintenance staff’s responsibility to rid a hospital floor of all germs. It takes an effort from the nurses, doctors, and even patients to keep it as sanitary as possible.
For starters, be sure to educate yourself on what you can be doing to help. Here are several hospital cleaning tips to regulate the number of germs and illnesses that spread in your building.
1. Invest in the Right Products
You and your hospital need to put a new emphasis on purchasing the right products for your sanitation needs.
Things such as garbage bags, drinking straws, and toothbrushes can start a buildup of germs faster than you might imagine. In fact, the bacteria on toothbrushes can spread down the bathroom sink and walls if not properly cleaned.
It’s important to invest in bio-degradable products for an easier and safer method of throwing these items away.
Better yet, invest in a trusted sanitation service that uses the top products to clean your hospital rooms inch by inch.
2. Stress the Need to Wear Gloves
One of the most exhaustive rules in your entire hospital should be the need for workers to wear gloves at all times.
Many nurses and doctors are very selective in the number of times or the occasions for which they’ll actually put gloves on. Any activity that your workers perform will contain a serious amount of germs.
If those germs were to be placed on latex gloves, then they can be easily controlled by throwing those gloves away in the proper wastebasket.
If you aren’t wearing gloves, then you’re spreading germs to everyone else that you come into contact with.
3. Encourage Patients to Wear Shoes
Obviously, the top priority in regulating the cleanliness of your hospital is to ensure the safety of your patients.
While you and your entire staff will do their utmost in fighting germs and bacteria, you also need to keep the patients aware of their part in this as well.
One of the best things to do is try to remind each patient to wear shoes at all times when walking around on the floors of their room.
Better yet, you might want to consider investing in disposable slippers that they can throw away after each walk to and from the bathroom.
Simply explain your hospital’s clean hospital initiative and how they’re walking around barefoot would go against it.
4. Alert for High-Touch, High-Traffic
There are two phrases that you need to educate your entire staff: areas of high-traffic and areas of high-touch.
Both types of high-gathered areas are where germs, bacteria, and airborne illnesses like to mingle around.
Areas such as bathrooms, hospital rooms, employee break rooms, hospital lobbies, and even elevators need to be thoroughly cleaned.
5. Switch Out Bed Pillows Often
No patient should have the same bed pillow for longer than 24-hours, even if they’re staying the night (or for the foreseeable future).
Make sure to switch out the pillow covers each morning after your patient spends the night.
Pillows can have more than 350,000… yes, 350,000 live bacteria colonies on it at any given time. Regulating them more cautiously will give your hospital’s cleanliness a huge turnaround!
6. Dodge Cross-Contamination at all Costs
Cross-contamination can happen in many ways in your hospital. A nurse could be using the microwave after seeing a patient, a doctor shakes the hand of a patient’s relative after tending to the patient, etc.
However, one of the most common ways is not properly cleaning or storing of a mop after using it.
Instead of a mop, try doing more cleaning by spraying and vacuuming your hospital. Of course, you’ll also need to wipe down surfaces, so have a proper disposal process for that as well.
7. Reduce Chemical Usage
In many ways, chemicals are just as harmful as germs. They can do significant damage to the skin of both patients and workers.
Try to invest in cleaning products that have as minimal of chemical compounds as possible.The fewer chemicals your cleaning supplies have, the more naturally clean your hospital will become.
8. Stress the Importance of Hand-Washing
The importance of hand-washing has been reestablished due to the current global pandemic.
However, many people still aren’t washing their hands thoroughly enough or as many times as they should.
Be sure to educate both staff and patients with infographics on proper hand-washing factoids near every sink in your building. After all, knowledge is power!
9. Spray Down Over-the-Bed Trays
Because your bed-ridden patients rely on them so much, the over-the-bed trays in your hospital are one of the dirtiest spots imaginable.
Your patients eat on them, sneeze on them, and cough on them, among other things. Be sure to spray them all down once a day and wipe them thoroughly.
10. Wash Linens Often
Between bed sheets, patient gowns, and towels for each room, your hospital easily contains thousands of linen pieces.
For that reason, you need to stay on top of the cleaning and distribution of those linens.
They need to be sorted, cleaned, folded, and ironed before they’re distributed to another client.
Make sure that you hire a top-quality linen service or an in-house linen worker that takes pride in clean linens for your patients.
Take Your Hospital Cleaning Initiatives to Another Level!
Now that you’ve seen several techniques for your hospital cleaning endeavors, it’s time to get to work!
The medical laboratory equipment you use plays a role in your hospital’s cleanliness as well.