Taking hygiene into your own hands

CLEAR GUIDELINES on best practice procedures enable staff to maintain high standards of hygiene while managing the busy day-to-day tasks of running a business, be that a restaurant, bar, hotel, care home or other area impacted by the increased need for hygiene. This article will provide clear and concise guidance to managing infection prevention and control.

Good hygiene practices – a check list

• Hand washing may seem trivial, but it is still the most important way to prevent the spread of infection and maintain personal hygiene. Effective handwashing means ensuring all parts of the hands and wrists should be washed with soap and water, for at least 20 seconds, before rinsing and drying on a disposable paper towel. This should be repeated throughout the day, before and after handling laundry, food, bathroom breaks and contact with other people.
• Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) should be worn in situations that carry a high risk of infection, to protect clothes and uniforms. PPE is single use and should be disposed of after each use. 
• Tying back or covering long hair as a standard procedure for staff prevents it from interfering with their day-to-day tasks and creates a cleaner and more hygienic environment.
• Cover cuts and grazes with suitable dressings (check with your manager if you are unsure). Cuts and grazes left exposed could attract harmful bacteria, especially on the hands, arms and face.
• Staff should stay off work if they are showing symptoms of a transmittable disease and return only after the advised time according to government regulation.
• Changing clothes should be strongly advised for staff when arriving to work. Staff should not wear their workwear to work but should instead change when at work and ideally leave dirty or soiled workwear to be hygienically laundered on premises if this facility is available. This prevents cross contamination outside of the workplace.

Laundry processes

Effective laundry processes play a fundamental part in infection prevention and control. Management and staff need to be thoroughly briefed on the correct laundry procedures and how to maintain high standards of hygiene, as well as any new industry regulations. In cases of high staff turnover, managers should keep up to date with new recruits who may be involved with laundry operations and provide relevant training. 

Staff should wear PPE, such as single-use aprons and gloves, when handling any dirty or soiled linen. Staff should remove and dispose of the contaminated PPE before moving on to other tasks such as handling clean laundry to avoid spreading infection.

Dirty laundry must be handled with care before washing to minimise the possibility of dispersing viruses through the air. Dirty laundry should be kept completely separate from clean, if possible, in a separate room. It should not be placed on the floor or other surfaces that could risk cross contamination. 

For front loading machines, staff should clean the door, door sealing, front panel and control panel with a disinfectant before unloading the machine. Self-opening bags should be loaded into the machine without removing the contents, this allows them to unwrap automatically during the wash process, as long as the drawstring has been released, and prevents further spread of infection.

When it comes to laundry cycles, staff should only use programmes with elevated temperatures (>60°C) and thermo or chemo-thermo disinfection wash cycles to ensure good hygiene and disinfection. Staff should also ensure the prescribed quantity of detergent is properly measured and that an appropriate temperature for the specific detergent is set when manually dispensing detergent. 

Staff should not manually sluice items contaminated with bodily fluids. Washable soiled items should be placed into an alginate bag/water soluble bag and staff should wear gloves and an apron for this process. The Department of Health’s Health Technical Memorandum 01-04 states that washing should be held at either 71⁰C for at least three minutes, or 65⁰C for at least 10 minutes, for effective thermal decontamination to take place.

Landry equipment and design 

The correct equipment and process-led laundry design will significantly help to ensure effective infection prevention. An on-premise laundry (OPL) provides full control of laundry processes and design. By keeping laundry processes onsite, the risk of cross-contamination with external organisations is significantly reduced. It also means that wash cycles are set to recommended temperatures and for thermo or chemo-thermo disinfection, wash cycles are used with the prescribed quantity of detergent.

When specifying laundry equipment, it is important to consider the volume of laundry produced on a day-to-day basis to calculate the machine capacity required to cater for volume requirements. All machines should be professionally installed and maintained. Opting for a commercial model ensures optimum cycle times and temperatures. Pairing a commercial machine with specialist detergent enables the agitation of laundry required to kill infectious diseases. 

Handwashing facilities, including hand wash basins, liquid soap, disposable paper towels and pedal operated waste receptacles, should also be made accessible in various locations in the laundry. This is something that should not be overlooked as clean hands are the single most important factor for preventing the spread of infection and ensuring harmful germs and micro-organisms are not being transferred to other people, equipment or surfaces.

In the kitchen

Laundry is not the only area that should be prioritising infection control, kitchens can also be high traffic areas where hygiene is crucial. Good hygiene practices also apply in the kitchen, including during the unloading of dishwashers, in order to avoid the risk of re-contaminating clean crockery, but there are some further considerations that can be made to ensure the safety of staff and the public. 

When loading a dishwasher, avoid any overlapping or overcrowding that could prevent water from reaching all surfaces. For wash cycles, only use programmes with elevated temperatures (>60°C) to ensure good hygiene and disinfection, and also ensure that sufficient detergent is dispensed on all machines. By way of a further safety measure, the use of a detergent containing chlorine is recommended. 

Responsibilities

Everyone involved in the laundry and cleaning processes is responsible for minimising the spread of infection. It is beneficial for managers and staff to be regularly reminded of their responsibilities in ensuring the entire team is correctly fulfilling their requirements. Managers have a responsibility to provide their teams with the necessary knowledge and resources to protect both the public and themselves from the spread of infection. This should be standardised throughout the business and everyone’s knowledge should be refreshed at least once a year. 

Managers are also responsible for ensuring safety equipment, such as supply of single use PPE, is available to all staff. Once briefed, staff should be responsible for appropriately using equipment. They should also be knowledgeable about good hand washing and employ the required technique regularly during the working day. 

It is a good idea for managers to set out a clear, thorough, and prescriptive infection control plan and for all staff to familiarise themselves with any special precautions and measures that should be taken, specifically those adapted to tackle issues around the spread of Covid-19, to ensure the health and safety of the team and the public. The policy should be a part of each company’s culture and ethos; lived and breathed by all staff.

Wrap up 

Clarity, inclusion and transparency are all fundamental to a successful infection control plan. The current climate has left many people feeling anxious and as a result, consumer expectations around hygiene have heightened. By taking these precautions, businesses are able to offer reassurance that processes are in place to mitigate the risk of infection. Staff should be able to give a clear explanation on exactly what infection control measures are being taken and be able to demonstrate when needed, that these measures are being carried out. 

Claire Humphrey is category manager at the professional division of Miele

For more information visit www.miele.co.uk/professional