Polishing it off quickly
April 1st 2008

Plymouth Hospital NHS Trust has found the solution for keeping its ward floors in the peak of polished condition

It seems never a day goes by without negative media comments and stories about unwashed hands and grubby bathroom facilities within the NHS. But what about the hospitals and health centres that actually go the extra cleaning mile? Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust in Devon is looking on the bright side of things,by keeping its floors polished with Betco Quick Coat Hard as Nails.

Floor stripping and polishing has traditionally been a very difficult task to complete, as occupied hospital beds do not allow the ward to be emptied for half a day – the time needed to strip and apply four coats of polish.With each coat taking an average of an hour to dry the task poses great problems in terms of time.

Derriford Hospital is the largest acute hospital in Devon and surrounds. It covers a 15 000m2 area housing 900 continuously occupied beds, so any cleaning and maintenance work has to be scheduled around patient beds and visiting times. On-site domestic manager Maggie Phillips from ISS Mediclean had tried using various floor coatings but none could complete the job under such pressing time constraints.

After working her way through these various different products without success,Phillips eventually tested Betco Quick Coat and found it was just the job."Betco is the only product that meets my time-critical schedule.We now work small ward areas at a time to minimise disruption. We can strip floors, apply three coats of Betco and the whole process is completed in an hour.The first coat takes up to ten minutes and subsequent ones only 5-8 minutes to dry. It is amazing."This efficiency means a job that previously took several hours to finish is now completed in the time it used to take just one layer of polish to dry.

Phillips continues: "Drying speed not only reduces labour costs, it also increases safety because it minimises the time that floors are wet". The product has been such a success that its usage is not just confined to wards. She says the hospital uses it practically everywhere."We now use Betco Quick Coat on all wards, corridors, reception and public areas on both floor tiles and sheet vinyl".

Derriford Hospital's head of site and commercial services is Liz McGuffog.She is another convert to the product.Prior to witnessing Betco Quick Coat's performance for herself,McDuffog admits she was sceptical."When I first heard about this product I did not believe what I was told and asked for a demonstration to prove it."The results soon convinced her."Once in action I immediately saw the difference in speed and level of floor shine. It is so fast, offers so many benefits and provides the high level of shine we require on our floors". It was the speed of the product that was of vital importance. "Recently,when we were upgrading three wards we were running out of time to implement a deep clean, strip and polish the floors.In my experience we would not have re-opened the wards on time if we had used any other floor polish."

More articles from Betco UK: