Rubbermaid Commercial Products describes how Initial Hospital Services’ implementation of a revised cleaning regime at Croydon’s Mayday University Hospital using its recently developed, chlorine-resistant Microfibre Cleaning system has reduced cross-contamination risks, improved safety, reduced worker tiredness, enhanced efficiency, and cut the amount of water and chemicals used.
At the Mayday University NHS hospital in Croydon, South London, Initial Hospital Services has provided cleaning and portering services since 1991. It employs 270 staff at the hospital, available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Significant challenge
NHS standards require that each clinical room at Mayday Hospital be cleaned at least three times per day. With 670 beds and average occupancy rates near 99%, this represents a significant challenge for the cleaning team. The “traditional” cleaning method being used was simply not proving sufficiently effective. It involved using cotton mops and changing the water and detergent regularly (at least once after the cleaning of each individual room and more frequently if needed). The mops were colour-coded according to the NHS 4-area system (blue for general areas, red for sanitary areas, yellow for infectious areas, and green for kitchen areas) to ensure that mops for one area were not used in another. However, throughout the course of the day the same mop would be used in a large number of rooms within its colour area. It would only be changed at the start of the evening shift – when it was sent to be laundered. This system posed a variety of problems, the majority stemming from the concern that the water was only clean the first time it was used. In particular, it raised the question: “When does one classify the water as being dirty?” While members of the cleaning staff were instructed to change the water after cleaning each individual room, within the room itself it was left up to the individual to make the highly subjective decision as to when the water needed to be changed. Another consequence was that, if the water was not changed sufficiently often (especially in a large room), the cleaning process could be moving dirt from one part of the room to another, thus spreading, rather than removing, germs. Such a system also relies heavily on use of large amounts of cleaning chemicals in the water to disinfect properly, with the associated waste. Lastly, it places considerable strain on the cleaning staff, since each time they need to change the water, they must walk down the hallway to the cleaning cupboards where there is a water source, and then carry the buckets all the way back to the room they must clean. This is both physically tiring for them and highly inefficient.
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