Cleaning in doctor’s surgeries and clinics often takes a back seat or neglected all together, and yet the public who use these facilities every day are, by their very nature, more susceptible to illness or more likely to carry an illness. All it takes is for someone to attend the surgery with an appointment complaining of vomiting and diarrhoea to introduce norovirus or some other GI infection into the surgery. Now introduce patients with reduced immune defences due to indwelling medical devices or medication. Cleaning and infection control is essential to prevent the transmission of pathogenic microorganisms to vulnerable people throughout the clinic – it could be from the toilets, the waiting room or just a door handle.

This brand new onsite course teaches students two fundamental and vital principles of cleaning and infection control: The Chain of Infection and Zone Cleaning. It is important to understand the nature of infection and how it spreads, before planning cleaning operations, so these two principles are taught in part 1 and 2 of the course respectively. The objective of teaching The Chain of Infection is to ensure the students have a good grounding of all stages of an infection and how it relates to cleaning and disinfecting surfaces. This knowledge is taken forward to the next part in zone cleaning where infection control is built into the cleaning from the very early stages.

Zone cleaning is a highly efficient and systematic way of breaking down an entire building into a series of room cleaning plans. This method teaches the students all the required information needed, including colour-coding, PPE, the appropriate cleaning techniques, order of cleaning and the required cleaning standards to reach. The course teaches this method in a highly interactive way with an exercise that the students are required to create their own room cleaning plan for a room they currently clean in. Quality and standards in cleaning are very important concepts for students to understand, not just in maintaining a good appearance for visitors and other staff, but also maintaining high hygiene standards.

This course also covers correct handling waste that are suspected to be contaminated with blood and other bodily fluids. The correct procedure is very important to prevent harm to the cleaner and also to prevent unnecessary spread of infection.

Lastly, the course covers safe use and handling of cleaning chemicals which looks at the hazards posed by different types of cleaning chemicals and different ways of working with those chemicals. Once the hazards have been identified, this part encourages the student to understand the risks and adopt safer ways of working to reduce the likelihood of harm to themselves and others.