How To Maintain Your Care Home's Bedpan Washer During An Outbreak Of Infection
Outbreaks of infection are a nightmare for care homes.
You spend countless hours trying to ensure that they never happen – from responsibly disposing of waste, to thorough hand washing and the use of PPE. However, it can only take one small oversight for your care home to fall victim to an aggressively spreading illness, such as clostridium difficile or coronavirus.
If an outbreak occurs, you must spring to action in order to keep your carers and residents safe. They are, without exception, always your first priority. However, there are still other implications to consider, too.
Will the outbreak damage your valuable reputation? Will you be burdened with tough-to-balance additional costs? Will your existing supplies and machinery cope with the extra demand?
DDC Dolphin engineers will support your infection control needs, without risk.
More than ever, you will be relying on your bedpan washer to control the infection and halt its spread.
Every part of your infection control strategy is vital.
If your residents require re-usable bedpans, urinals and commode pots to support their toileting needs, it’s incredibly important that these items are thoroughly disinfected before they reach the next user.
Without a reliable bedpan washer to do the job, your carers and residents are at immediate risk of pathogens spreading from person to person. If an infection is already making its way around your care home, the lack of thorough disinfection of reusable items will have devastating consequences.
Does the layout of premises, use of space and hygiene practice at your care home promote safety? It’s a key line of enquiry for the CQC, so don’t be caught out.
REGISTER FOR A FREE AUDIT to make sure your sluice room is compliant
Remember that your bedpan washer needs care, too.
Like any kind of machine, your bedpan washer needs to be cared for in order to do its job reliably. Without proper maintenance, it’s likely to experience faults, or even break down completely – which can easily turn an infection control issue into a crisis.
When an outbreak of infection hits, you may find yourself making changes to how your care home is usually managed. This will often be for very sensible reasons, but its important not to unwittingly make the problem worse by deflecting other responsibilities – particularly where your sluice room machinery is concerned.
You should always press on with your service schedule.
During an outbreak of infection, it can be tempting to refuse all entry to the care home until the illness is under control. Where casual guests are concerned, this is often very wise – but less so when it comes to maintenance engineers.
By suspending routine maintenance and servicing, you could leave yourself exposed to preventable technical issues. As a result, the existing emergency could be made far worse by a washer disinfector that has broken down when you’re relying on it the most.
DDC Dolphin’s engineers are infection control experts who you can trust to safely provide essential maintenance to your sluice room machinery, even during a crisis.
Our engineers are equipped with far more protection than the basic PPE like masks, gloves and aprons. They’re not limited by NHS budgets and over-stretched supply chains, meaning that they can come equipped with vastly superior equipment, including full hazmat suits for maximum protection from infection.
In addition, DDC Dolphin engineers are fully trained in the very latest infection-prevention and decontamination protocols. Well-versed in dealing with hospitals that treat patients suffering from highly infectious tropical diseases, managing dangerous infection control scenarios is very much part of our engineers’ remit.
If you don’t already have a service contract, you really should consider one. Without it, you are far more likely to experience costly and dangerous sluice machine faults.
360° Service by DDC Dolphin is the ideal preventative measure. We can service and repair not only your DDC Dolphin machinery, but all other makes and models, too – even if your current provider refuses to maintain the machine.
Don’t skimp on your sluice room consumables.
The unexpected costs involved with managing an outbreak of infection may push you to make tough budgeting decisions.
Where sluice room consumables are often ‘out of sight and out of mind’, it’s tempting to switch to cheaper brands, or even to not buy the items at all.
Attempting to save money by cutting consumable purchases will only increase your costs later down the line. Whilst your bedpan washer will continue to function without additional chemicals, it won’t be doing its job properly – leaving you, your carers and residents susceptible to further infection control dangers.
It simply isn’t worth the risk.
360° Chemical is a cost-effective service that will ensure you always have just the right amount of sluice machine consumables to suit your needs. Better yet, it’ll give you the peace of mind that your machinery is working at its optimum and actively keeping your residents safe from infection.
DISCOVER THE FULL BENEFITS OF CARE & MAINTENANCE WITH DDC DOLPHIN HERE
Have you seen these related articles?
