Sentara Healthcare recently initiated a campaign to assess the practices used to clean patient rooms and to determine best practices for environmental services departments, according to an article on the Health Facilities Management website.
Sentara, headquartered in Norfolk, Va., developed a consistent cleaning and disinfection protocol with structured interviews with questions focused on education and training; logistics, and cleaning of occupied, discharged and isolation rooms.
The interviews uncovered opportunities existed to improve standardization for processes and products across all facilities.
These included education and training for new employees, annual competency and audit requirements; universal checklists and assignment sheets; and elimination of cloth cubicle curtains.
A subsequent systemwide summit resulted in three updated policies: cleaning an occupied patient room, cleaning a discharged patient room and cleaning cubicle curtains.
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