If a patient has an infection that could possibly be transmitted to another patient, additional cleaning, isolation and barrier nursing is carried out in line with national guidance on infection control.
Every area has a matron who is a very senior nurse who, together with ward managers, liaises closely with the cleaning services team to keep high standards of cleanliness. All patient areas have at least one member of domestic staff who perform routine cleaning duties on a daily basis, and a rolling programme of other cleaning tasks. Cleaning schedules are reviewed regularly.
We would appreciate it if patients and visitors would help us to keep the hospital clean and tidy by disposing of any litter thoughtfully.
We would also welcome it if you have any concerns about the standard of cleanliness on any of our wards please do not hesitate to let staff know at the time, so they can be dealt with promptly or contact the Service Manager on 001204 370502.
24 hour cover
The Trust has access to Cleaning services 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Routine cleaning is available between 7am-10pm Monday –Friday, 7am- 8pm Saturday & Sunday.
Outside of these hours there is there is a small team available to provide help with any urgent problems and to maintain cleanliness in A& E and our assessment wards.
Routine cleaning
All ward beds are cleaned weekly between Monday-Friday by the ward domestic. A colour coded tagging system was introduced to ensure no bed or trolley is ever missed.
In addition to this all public areas are patrolled every day between the hours of 8am & 4pm. This team ensure all corridors, stairs and public toilets are regularly cleaned and have sufficient supply of soap and hand towels. The Alcohol Gel Dispensers are checked and refilled as required and any spillages are dealt with. The team also provide this service to all the out patient areas. The staff record and complete a check list in all public toilets when they have cleaned them. The Trust has a rolling programme of deep cleaning which means that all hospital beds, A&E Trolleys, ward furniture and equipment are steam cleaned
How we ensure these standards are maintained
We monitor this in a number of ways. ISS Medi-clean senior managers follow a 13 week plan so that standards of cleanliness are monitored across all areas of the hospital. High priority areas such as Accident & Emergency, Intensive Care Unit, High Dependency Unit and Theatres and emergency assessment wards are monitored on a weekly basis, wards and clinical areas are monitored monthly and other areas are then monitored every 13 weeks.
Matrons and ward managers also conduct quality rounds on a regular basis, which includes checking cleanliness of areas.
There is a monthly Trust wide environmental inspection, this team is made up from Matrons, infection control nurses, cleaning representative from ISS Mediclean and facility services.
Over arching all these arrangements are the yearly Patient Environmental Action team (PEAT) inspections that the hospital participates in, which have internal and external representatives.
How we maintain Quality of care on the wards
In 2007 our senior nurses and midwives developed a uniform approach to ensuring consistency in care on wards, from this the ‘Exemplar ward’ was developed which involves an intensive 3 month project to start then process.
A Productive ward programme has been launched by the Department of Health, very much complements our internal exemplar programme. The areas of quality improvement for ward management and patient care are based on Lean principles that we follow, and are all incorporated into the Exemplar ward programme.
We are now planning on using the programme of work from the Productive ward programme to build onto what we already do. We have a plan to roll out this intensive programme over the next 15 months.
The Exemplar Ward Programme
The Exemplar ward programme is linked to the Trusts 4 main aims and key initiatives and the anticipated benefit is to bring all our wards to a baseline standard of the highest delivery of care, underpinned by enhanced competency and awareness of patient safety and quality improvement. A further feature of the Exemplar programme is to ensure staff maintain the highest level of and consistent standard of care. This element of the programme is based on a series of patient focused benchmarks that are set out in the Essence of Care, covering fundamental areas of care, that includes communication, respect and food and nutrition.
Achievement Boards:
Achievement boards are displayed on each ward, this is a visual way of showing staff, patients and visitors what work the team are doing to provide excellent standards of care and incorporate the standards we expect from the exemplar ward programme. The boards are divided into four sections that cover the Trusts 4 main aims:
-
Improving Health
information in this section includes how the team are maintaining high standards of infection prevention and control. This is shown through recording the results from hand hygiene audits and the number of health care associated infections there are.
-
Best Possible Care
A quality framework tool has been developed based on fundamental needs and based on the benchmarks, and they are used to identify areas that the team is doing well with, as well as areas that they may need to focus some improvement work on.
-
Joy and Pride
We know that it is important for staff to be happy in their work, so this section include a ‘spot check’ about how staff feel as well as capturing the range of comments from patients and visitors, this includes such feedback as thank you cards, or comment cards.
-
Value for money
This area of the board looks at the efficiency of the ward, and how well they manage their budget. So teams focus on looking at there system for ordering supplies, and checking that stock levels meet the needs of the ward.
How we monitor these standards 'Go and See'
The Trust has in place a strong infrastructure to support the exemplar programme, this includes 21 matrons across the trust. Within the Matrons job roles, they visit their wards daily and at least weekly, carry out a ‘quality round’. The quality round involves talking to patients and their families about their experience. The Matrons also review the achievement boards, with the ward Sister to discuss and explore the progress of the team.
Visible Leadership through 'Go & See'
The Divisional Nurses, each have professional leadership of their divisions, as part of this they conduct a rota of ‘Go & See’ visits across there wards and departments of the operational issues, this must now be addressed. Through these visits the divisional nurse has an overview of the Ward leadership and that the standards are being maintained. This is reported to the Professional Meeting through the Head of clinical practice.
Executive 'Go & See's'.
There is a calendar of Go & See visits for all members of the Executive Board Team, including the Chief Executive and Director of Nursing & Performance Improvement.
When they visit wards they talk with staff about how well the ward is doing and how they ask staff how they feel about working, as well as exploring patient safety. They particularly like to talk to patients and ask them about their experience.
Useful websites
Please click on the following links:
Patient Environment Action Teams (PEAT)
The Patient Environment Action Team (PEAT) programme was established to assess NHS hospitals in 2000, and has been managed by the NPSA since 2006.
The Productive Ward
Following a period of intensive testing and development with a number of acute trusts in England, the NHS Institute has now launched a series of modules that enable ward staff to increase the time spent on direct patient care.