Question

You are a housekeeping supervisor at a hospital with 80 beds. On your first day on the job your director tells you that there are lot of problems that need to be addressed. She says she can’t help you because she is also responsible for the food services and maintenance departments and is very busy. She tells you that the last patient survey that was sent to patients who were recently discharged identified that patients felt that their rooms were not clean and the patients gave the hospital a 65% satisfaction rating in cleanliness. The director says that the infection rates in the hospital are too high and other department is saying that lack of cleanliness is contributing to the high infection rates.

a) Discuss, in writing, how you would go about finding out the specific issues that need to be addressed on the inpatient units.

b) During your investigation you found that some of the patient rooms look like they hadn’t been cleaned in a few days. When you ask the cleaner why the rooms haven't been cleaned he tells you that the patient unit is very busy.

c) You looked at the disinfectant the housekeeping staff use and when you ask the staff what type of disinfectant is being used to clean the patient rooms, they tell you they use what they are given.

d) Describe how you would address the top three issues you identified during your investigation.

Answer 1

a) way of finding specific issues are-

• Observation of physical set up of the ward - such as distance between two beds of patient, proper ventilation system, proper light source, water source.

• Availability of cleaner.

• Frequency of cleaning.

• Availability of disinfectant.

• Knowledge of cleaners and Patients about infection control and bio medical waste management.

• Availability of dustbins.

b) Instruct the cleaner to clean the patient's room everyday in a particular time and that particular time the Patient party should be instructed not to enter into the ward.

c) provide health teaching to the house keeping staff about use of common disinfectant and how to use of this, checking of expirey date.

d) • Employment of appropriate number of house keeping staff.

• Visitor restricted at a particular time of the day for cleaning of the ward and instruct the cleaner, visitors, Patient to discard waste products in the dustbin.

• House staff should be instructed for 3 to 4times mopping in the ward with disinfectant.