Hygiene is the top priority: laundry equipment in hospitals and health centres

Hygiene measures and laundry equipment for clean rooms

In health facilities like hospitals, a high level of hygiene is always expected. This level of hygiene represents, in big part, the thoroughness and professionalism of the centre. Because of this, installing healthy laundry equipment is of great importance to avoid any setback caused by an infection passed through the hospital clothing or linens. Doing the right things to keep everything clean, hygienic and disinfected will be a priority for the personnel at all time, as all products should be ready to use for the patients: towels, gowns, blankets, cushions, curtains, personnel uniforms, chef aprons, etc.

Designing laundry equipment for hospitals

Designing laundry equipment for hospitals requires a great selection of machinery, which can help optimize the washing saving both power and water. These savings usually are one of the tipping points that make hospital management decide of one service over another, altogether with the quality of washing, as the hospital staff and the patients will feel the quality of it when using clean clothing and linens.

Sensitivity is, also, a very relevant issue to take care of in hospitals and health centres as these environments require complete control of the level of hygiene and contamination. Being able to identify the cause of pathogens presence and an exhaustive control of infections are two big forces that guide the health centre to a proper level of hygiene for this type of facility.

Designing the space in which to install the laundry equipment in a hospital

It is of great importance that the management of the hospital establishes a department with highly-qualified people in charge of managing the laundry equipment and the services that can be offered with it.

Sometimes, these services are monetized by offering them to the public altogether with the service offered to the hospital. Doing so may cause a deviation from the purpose of the service and increase the risk of nosocomial infections or contagion. The laundry equipment installation must be strategically located in a well-ventilated area, which should be properly analysed beforehand to avoid any possible errors during the installation process.

The personnel in charge of the department and the laundry teams do not only have the responsibility of keeping the hospital clothing and linings. They also have to take decisions such as which fabrics are more appropriate, which kind of bed linings should be bought or how many spare units of each product should the hospital have, as well as keeping registers and accounting up to date in order to analyse the performance of the operations and services of the centre. The personnel also have to recollect the dirty clothes from the personnel and the patients, clean, classify and distribute them back to the corresponding departments.

Activities/Schedule

The register of the tasks done by the laundry personnel should give the management data about what happens in the hospital: changing of linings, picking up dirty clothes, how are they classified, identification and cleaning of stains and blood, disinfection, cleaning, drying, ironing and the distribution of the products back to the corresponding department of the hospital.

It is recommended to define a schedule, as most of these tasks must be done on a daily basis.

Using hygienic laundry equipment for its efficiency

The hospital should always have the adequate laundry equipment so there are no setbacks in daily operations. When selecting the right equipment, it is not only mandatory that clothes are perfectly clean but also that efficiency and productivity of the team is improved. The laundry equipment consists of washer extractors, chemicals injectors, dryers, irons, stands, tables and more.

Picking the right machines will help the personnel work much faster and efficiently. Washer extractors can also increase efficiency, reducing up to a 70% the drying process and, furthermore, reducing drastically the power usage.

There are also chemicals injectors that can detect stains from blood or other liquids. These chemicals are appropriate and preferred over cleaning these stains manually, as they do it faster and with lower power consumption.

Even in small installations, sanitary barrier washers can be installed passing through the wall with double door, where you put dirty clothes from one side and pick up the clean ones from the other. This will help keeping dirty and contaminated clothes apart from the clean ones.

High-spinning barrier washers are highly recommended as they provided good defence against germs thanks to their separated and opposed doors which assure that there is no contact between dirty clothes and clean clothes.

In conclusion, the laundry equipment of a hospital must be bought under different specifications and characteristics that satisfy both the centre needs and the established hygienic standards.