P-111 The importance of a dedicated forward thinking housekeeping team working in a clinical environment

The housekeeping team worked daily to ensure the cleaning and standards of the hospice where completed to a high standard - but what standard? The cleaning team didn’t have a choice on decision making or cleaning standards so we introduced a team leader who recognised the need for change to have a proactive approach to cleanliness, decontamination and infection prevention. We implemented change and for the first time the Housekeeping team leader sat on the infection prevention and cleanliness committee (IPCC) not only being an attendee but an active member to bring best practice and ideas forward. New policies and procedures where written, housekeeping staff re-trained and mentored. One positive improvement was to introduce Green “I am clean” stickers. These where easily recognisable by all; nursing staff, patients and families were confident knowing that the rooms where clean and the housekeeping team found this a positive communication skill. We then needed to review that change to ensure this was an improvement. So we created cleanliness and operational reports approved by our IPCC. We based this on the PLACE model and tailored the areas of inspection to Cleanliness and Operation of patients’ areas to ensure these are fit for use as well as clean. The report has 30 domains to score against which gives an overall rating of: Once the report is complete, findings are reported to IPCC. In future it’s hoped we can start to extract data which then can be used further to support training and best practice sharing. This forward thinking will certainly bring the housekeeping team to the forefront of the hospice rather than feeling undervalued and proves that collaborative working on this domain has been highly positive move.