Is Your Facility Hurting Patient Recovery? - Team INX

It is confusing to the medical profession why some patients recover faster than others. Here is a small element that may well prove to be a factor – how clean the medical office is and the role of the medical office cleaning services in creating that environment.

Perception is Everything

There are many factors to a patient’s recovery, including the severity and type of his or her illness, his or her own responsibility for his or her health, compliance with the treatment prescribed by the doctor, availability of medicine or medical intervention, and family health.

Health professionals are discovering more often that a patient’s mindset and expectations of his or her recovery play a part.

So, how does medical office cleaning play a role in something like a patient’s recovery?

When a person is ill and walks into a doctor’s office, his or her minds are focused on his or her own problems and vulnerability. This is especially evident if the problem is a disease or illness rather than an accident. If a patient feels vulnerable, then any evidence of a threat will be noticed and often exaggerated in his or her mind.

A messy and dusty medical office may inadvertently signal to the patient the doctor is not the most professional or best choice for him or her or the doctor might make a mistake with his or her care.

Janitorial cleaning services need to make sure to remove any insecurity from the patient’s mind about these issues so the doctor, patients, and their families may focus on the treatment and not the distractions.

Unseen Dangers

However, even though these perceptions may affect the patient and be unnecessary, there are real dangers in an unclean medical office. That is where medical office cleaning services companies need to take their responsibility very seriously.

When dealing with medical issues and seeing different patients with different problems, doctors are exposed to germs, viruses, or bacteria. If the doctor is not careful, he or she may contaminate one patient with another’s germs. Or, while visiting another part of the medical office or hospital, he or she will bring back a contaminant.

It is a huge problem for the medical community that so many patients in hospitals contract secondary infections from the very environment they have come to in order to get well. A doctor could also bring something back into his or her office.

That is why janitorial companies trained in medical cleaning need to be vigilant in keeping the area clean.

Create a Safe Healing Environment

Many doctors embrace new ways of creating a healing and safe environment for patients. The belief is that a calmer, more beautiful environment makes the patient feel more peaceful and he or she will embrace his or her healing more.

While some of these new approaches are good in terms of a clean environment, a medical office cleaning company needs to pay attention to them to guarantee the areas are kept clean.

Way beyond soft music and old magazines, modern medical offices often include the following:

• Living plants that need to be watered, dead leaves removed, and large leaves dusted or wiped down.
• Water features, sometimes with water-based plants.
• Fish and other aquatic features. These need to be monitored to guarantee the water is clean, no algae are evident, and anything dead is removed. This is probably not the task of the janitorial cleaning services company, but it can certainly bring it to the attention of the medical administration personnel.
• Smell is very important. Some doctors may like to use an incense burner to hide the antiseptic smell. Make sure, though, that any artificial odors do not obscure those that may indicate something is wrong, dead or dirty.
• Natural light is a very important element in modern healing, and some doctor’s offices may take advantage of this. In this case, the medical office cleaning staff needs to make sure that windows, glass doors, louvers and blinds, curtains, and sliding doors are all clean and dust- and streak-free.
• Waiting areas with comfortable chairs and plush carpets are lovely to sit in, but, sometimes, they tend to hide more dust and dirt than the more sterile plastic versions. A professional cleaning company should ensure that comfort, as well as cleanliness, is possible.

Children in a Doctor’s Rooms

In pediatrician’s rooms or doctors whose patients may bring small children, there are often toys available for the children to play with. These toys are a magnet for germs, and children very easily pass on and pick up illnesses from each other. Regardless of whether the patient is the child or the parent, a medical cleaning services company should ensure those toys are completely clean. If a parent sees a toy with some gum stuck to it, or, perhaps, something sticky and unidentifiable, he or she will immediately feel threatened and distressed.

Ensure the toys are clean and hand any toys that are too difficult to clean or too old to the medical administration team and ask them to discard or replace the items.

The Doctor’s Consulting Room

The doctor’s consulting room is of particular concern to the professional cleaning company. While you may not have access to the room during the day, between patients, medical cleaning services must ensure the room is spotless both visibly and in terms of germs and hidden dirt.

Wipe down and disinfect all surfaces, the examination bed, and the guest chairs.

Make sure that medical journals, posters, and certificates on the walls are dusted, clean, and in good condition. Sun-faded posters make a patient feel like his or her doctor is out of touch.

Consider the room from the patient’s point of view and make sure there is no evidence of dirt on the examination bed or any of the testing equipment.

Medical Office in a Hospital Environment

Where a medical office is in a hospital environment, these issues are of particular concern. Janitorial cleaning services need to make sure no germs enter the doctor’s office from the hospital, and, equally, that no germs from the doctor’s office enter the hospital.

Even mild infections from the hospital may set back the recovery of a patient whose immune system is vulnerable to an unrelated illness.

Patient recovery is complicated and relies on many factors. A professional cleaning company can be a part of the process of healing, even if the patient never realizes it.

To speak to a company that specializes in health-care cleaning, give iNX a call. We have years of experience and the training and expertise to keep your health-care facility clean and safe. 1 (888) TEAM-iNX