Speaking at the Association of Healthcare Cleaning Professionals recent 2013 Annual Conference in Bolton, in her final address as AHCP national chair, Denise Foster, hotel services manager at South Tees Hospitals NHS Trust, challenged Association members, the NHS, and the Government, to introduce nationally recognised pre-entry qualifications and training standards for healthcare cleaners.
She said: “Currently, despite the many well-publicised cases such as Mid-Staffordshire, and the complexity of the tools and processes available for maintaining cleanliness and hygiene in hospitals, anyone can be recruited as a healthcare cleaner without the need for any training in the increasingly complex protocols and processes involved. I believe no one should be able to work in healthcare cleaning without first achieving some level of basic professional qualification.”
Her call came as the AHCP unveiled plans to revamp its own continuing professional education, training, and personal development programmes, ‘to drive up skill levels in the sector, and encourage more young people to choose healthcare cleaning as a career’.
The AHCP argues that the absence of a pre-qualification entry route is ‘a reflection of a culture that fails to fully recognise and reward professional healthcare cleaning for the critically important role it plays in keeping hospitals clean and infection-free’.
It adds: “It is astounding that untrained new recruits can be responsible for cleaning sensitive operating theatre equipment valued at millions of pounds, or working in close proximity to critically ill patients using high-tech cleaning equipment and disinfection agents not used outside healthcare settings, potentially within days of starting work.”
