Cleaning in Schools and Aged Care Facilities

Schools and aged care facil­i­ties can be a breed­ing ground for infec­tious dis­ease due to the length of time and dif­fi­cul­ty of main­tain­ing social dis­tanc­ing. The clean­ing indus­try has been called upon to increase clean­ing efforts, but how do we know what we are doing is the best process for infec­tious con­trol clean­ing?

Clean­ing Stan­dards

Clean­ing stan­dards in schools and aged care is often con­duct­ed with­out mea­sur­able results. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, clean­ing is usu­al­ly assessed by the naked eye which can­not see bac­te­ria sit­ting on the sur­faces.

When clean­ing and dis­in­fect­ing is per­formed incor­rect­ly, bac­te­ria may not be removed or killed. Instead, the bac­te­ria is just moved around the sur­face and can poten­tial­ly cross con­t­a­m­i­nate sur­faces that were not con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed to begin with.

Pur­pose of Clean­ing and Dis­in­fect­ing

It is impor­tant to under­stand the dif­fer­ences between clean­ing and dis­in­fect­ing. Clean­ing is refer­ring to the process of remov­ing dirt and debri. Dis­in­fect­ing is a process that will “kill” the micro­scop­ic organ­isms as claimed on the label of the prod­uct when used cor­rect­ly. Our ‘Microbe Clean — Basic Under­stand­ing’ course can assist in under­stand­ing the lan­guage, trans­mis­sion and man­age­ment of infec­tious con­trol clean­ing.

Touch Point Sur­faces

Both schools and aged care facil­i­ties will have dif­fer­ent touch points that are more like­ly to be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed. It is impor­tant to assess each area and iden­ti­fy the high touch points in par­tic­u­lar. These are sur­faces that are touched mul­ti­ple times a day and include things like door han­dles, doors, chairs, rails, and more. These touch points are com­mon­ly referred to as “HTO” (High Touch Objects and Sur­faces). 

Qual­i­ty of Clean­ing

Clean­ers are gen­er­al­ly cho­sen on price, rather than the qual­i­ty of work that has been done. With­out mea­sur­able results, bac­te­ria can sur­vive and con­tin­ue infect­ing. Bac­te­ria can­not be seen by the naked eye, BUT it can be test­ed for using an ATP (adeno­sine triphos­phate) device. 

Effec­tive Pro­to­cols and Pro­ce­dures

So how do you test, when do you test? There are so many ques­tions that accom­pa­ny test­ing effec­tive clean­ing. We have an online course called ‘Using ATP to Cre­ate Pro­to­cols’ that delves into the process of how to test your clean­ing pro­to­cols. This can be a good start­ing point, as you can ensure that your pro­to­cols and pro­ce­dures are effec­tive and effi­cient. You can test dif­fer­ent prod­ucts and equip­ment through this method. 

Fur­ther Test­ing

Once you have test­ed and imple­ment­ed an effec­tive clean­ing protocol/procedure, it is impor­tant that you reg­u­lar­ly spot test and fol­low up to make sure that your staff are con­tin­u­ing this method. It is one thing to have a protocol/procedure, but it is just as impor­tant to ensure that it is being fol­lowed.

With an increase in respon­si­bil­i­ty from clean­ers, we need to remain respon­si­ble and pro­fes­sion­al with­in the com­mu­ni­ty. We need to ensure that our clean­ing efforts are being test­ed and mea­sured for effec­tive and effi­cient clean­ing prac­tices. Pro­vid­ing a ser­vice that is being test­ed with mea­sur­able results can mean a high­er qual­i­ty ser­vice, high­er prof­it mar­gins, and con­tribut­ing to grow­ing the clean­ing com­mu­ni­ty and indus­try.