Proper cleaning is essential in keeping your medical practice hygienic for staff members and patients alike. It can be difficult for ordinary cleaners (or practice staff) to achieve the appropriate levels of infection prevention and control set out by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners, ensuring the correct standards of hygiene are maintained.
This is where a specialist commercial cleaning service can help. But while you’re quite likely keen to wash your hands of all cleaning in the practice, there are a few factors to consider and a plan to put in place before you hire a commercial cleaner in Sydney or Melbourne.
A cleaning policy
You’ll need to develop a cleaning policy for the practice. This should be a document that covers the role of practice staff and the commercial cleaners. Health and safety issues should be identified, and it’s important to include routine schedules for cleaning. You’ll also need a plan for what happens with any unscheduled cleaning, such as a spill that occurs when the professionals are not around.
The cleaning schedule
The frequency of cleaning in a medical practice is important. The policy should include a schedule for the commercial cleaning service to follow. The commercial cleaning provider should be fully conversant in what they should clean, when and how, to ensure nothing gets missed.
For example, high use areas such as floors/carpets, toilets, consultation rooms and equipment (including phones and keyboards) should be cleaned daily.
Areas with less contact such as walls, windows, window sills, and general furniture might be placed on a different rotation, such as every second day.
And don’t forget waiting room items such as toys. As well as regular cleaning, providing only those toys that can be easily washed can help minimise the possible spread of any infection.
Products for cleaning
In a medical practice environment, the types of products use for cleaning are important. Make sure you check to see that the cleaners you are considering hiring use appropriate products for medical centres, and have the right measures in place to prevent cross-contamination.
Daily monitoring of the outcome
It’s important to check that the daily cleaning standards are being met. This is a good way to keep on track with the needs of your practice, and also to ensure that nothing on the schedule is being missed. And if something hasn’t been cleaned properly, it will be identified quickly enough to ensure the continued safety and wellbeing of patients and staff.
A professional commercial cleaning service that specialises in cleaning medical practices can take the headache out of keeping your premises clean and hygienic on a regular basis. And once the cleaning schedule and policy has been set out for the practice, you can rest assured that the cleaners are following protocol and everything is being taken care of, without you having to lift so much as a micro-fibre cloth!