Keeping a clean workspace is generally important to most companies, especially in large facilities with a lot of employees. In the healthcare sector, a clean workspace is more than just a matter of keeping up appearances or preventing the spread of minor communicable diseases. Reduce cross-contamination is a must.
In most healthcare facilities, improperly sanitized and disinfected equipment can not only put doctors, nurses, and other healthcare providers at risk of serious illness; it can be as serious as life or death for the patients being treated there. That’s why preventing cross-contamination is vitally important in healthcare.
What is cross-contamination?
Cross-contamination refers to the spread of potentially harmful microorganisms, which includes bacteria and viruses. This can occur when multiple people touch an infected surface. And when they don’t practice proper handwashing techniques, or when medical tools are reused without being adequately sterilized.
Keeping your staff’s personal hygiene habits up to healthcare standard is just as important as disinfecting and sterilizing equipment when preventing cross-contamination. Here are a few specific ways to improve cleanliness practices in your healthcare facility:
Use proper cleaning, sanitization, and disinfection supplies.
This may seem obvious, but it’s important to make sure that your staff is using microfiber cloth for surface cleaning, hospital-grade disinfectant, and alcohol-based hand sanitizers. Hiring professional janitorial services is another great way to be sure that every inch of your facility is being properly cleaned, sanitized, and disinfected.
Educate about, and design policy around, infection control.
Different levels of staff in healthcare facilities are required to attend different levels of training before entering their jobs. Therefore, it’s important to make sure that every employee working in the building knows how to recognize common infections and prevent cross-contamination. After this step has been taken, make sure your staff is aware of pre-existing policies concerning which patients are at the highest risk of contracting infections within the hospital. And at what point high-risk patients need to be isolated from other patients and staff. If these policies don’t exist or aren’t up to date, create new policies for your facility.
Schedule regular deep cleanings.
There are many steps to be taken to keep a healthcare facility safe from cross-contamination on a day-to-day basis. This includes adding more hand sanitizing stations, making sure food is stored at the proper temperature, and encouraging patients not to walk barefoot. However, a deep cleaning of every area of the facility is the only way to be absolutely sure that any lingering viruses or bacteria have been eradicated. Deep cleanings should be performed by janitorial services at least twice a week.
The everyday practices of each staff member in your healthcare facility can make a huge difference in the reduce cross-contamination, either for better or worse. Once your entire staff has adopted the highest level of cleanliness practices, commercial janitorial services provide the extra support you need to ensure the safety of your patients and employees.
RJC upholds exceptionally high standards of cleanliness and customer service throughout Maryland, D.C., and Virginia. Contact RJC Enterprises today for quality commercial janitorial service that you can trust.
