By HFT Staff

Infection control has never been a higher priority in hospitals and other healthcare facilities. The COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing battle against healthcare-associated infections have raised the general public’s awareness of the critical role of environmental services departments in protecting patient health of patients and staff. 

To reinforce the role of infection control in patient health, the Association for the Health Care Environment (AHE) of the American Hospital Association has created a certificate program for non-acute care cleaning technicians, the Certificate in Non-acute Care Cleaning (CNACC) train-the-trainer program. It offers frontline cleaning and disinfection workers a thorough educational opportunity on cleaning in the healthcare environment outside of acute care settings. 

The program prepares frontline workers to break the chain of infection and contribute to ensuring positive patient outcomes. CNACC includes content specific to the full scopes of no-acute care areas such as outpatient, long-term care and behavioral health facilities, and other situations, such as construction cleaning. 

The CNACC program’s train-the-trainer model provides a cost-effective way to deliver this quality education to entire teams of high-performing non-acute care technicians. The program is offered as an online train-the-trainer workshop in which building services contractors, long-term care managers, and trainers and supervisors from health care facilities can first be trained, then bring the training back to their respective team members.