The Best Way to Disinfect a Doctor’s Office

Keeping patients healthy and happy starts immediately they step foot into a hospital or the doctor’s office. It continues as they sit in the waiting area, all the way to when the doctor will do a check-up on them and they leave the facility. Ensuring the areas that patients interact or engage with at the hospital are clean at all times is of vital importance. Patients do not want to carry pathogens back home that will end up causing more health issues. A doctor’s office has to be cleaned and disinfected at all times. This article gives information regarding how to go about ensuring a doctor’s office is pristine.

Choose the Right Tools

You need proper tools to do the cleaning and disinfecting task. Some of the supplies you need may include goggles, trash bags, latex gloves, and other normal cleaning equipment. Getting the right equipment for the job is something that could cost you quite some money. However, once the cleaning staff understands how to use the tools, their value improves.

a person cleaning the medical office
Having the right materials and supplies for the job enables you to clean for improved health.

Know the Right Cleaning Procedures

Cleaning a doctor’s office entails cleaning the waiting area, examination rooms, the bathrooms, and the doctor’s personal office. The doctor’s office and waiting area need regular vacuuming, dusting, wiping down surfaces, and polishing furniture using a disinfectant. These two areas also need wiping down of the counters using a dry piece of cloth and disinfecting to eliminate germs. This should be done on the windows, tables, and gadgets like telephones also using a disinfectant. A disinfectant like bleach mixed with water should work just fine for this task.

Cleaning and Disinfecting the Examination Room

For the examining rooms, any patient gowns, linens, towels, and any other materials used on or by a patient should be placed in medical disposable bags. Afterward, empty trashcans into disposable bags, wipe down counters, sinks, the exam table, and areas that patients have touched like chairs, doors, and door handles. This should be done using a disinfectant. For the floors, sweep and mop using a disinfectant.

Cleaning and Disinfecting the Bathrooms

For the bathrooms, spray disinfectant around the sinks, toilet seat, countertops, doors, and stall walls. Let the disinfectant sit for about five minutes before wiping down. Mix vinegar with water and use the solution to clean windows and mirrors. Wipe down paper towel dispensers and soap with disinfectant cloths. Later on, sweep and mop the floor with a disinfectant too.

How The Type of Facility Affects the Way, it Should Be Cleaned

Although every doctor’s office should be cleaned in almost the same manner, you need to note a few things when cleaning different facilities for different medical practitioners. A dentist’s office is usually cleaner based on the dentists’ work. For a normal medical doctor, it is good to understand that people visit this place because they are not feeling well. In such a facility, you need to do slower cleaning to do a thorough cleaning task. At the same time, sharp objects and disposable bags have to be properly disposed of, as they may contain bodily fluids that might pose health risks. Handling such items is not an easy task and it may even need special training and procedures, which may translate to increased costs.

For a pediatrician’s office, you have to understand that sick kids with runny noses will tend to touch anything they can get their hands to. In such a setting, you need to focus on surfaces and key touchpoints. For an oncologist’s office, adult clients mostly visit them. With this in mind, you have to note that the mess will be less since adults have a heightened sensitivity to such environments. However, it is still important to disinfect and clean any areas encountered by the patients.

As you have noticed in this article, cleaning a doctor’s office is not just about spraying and wiping. It involves other steps like disinfecting, where you want to ensure that cross-contamination is limited. A doctor’s office is a medical facility that deals with people’s health and wellbeing. Therefore, it has to be cleaned and properly disinfected to reduce contamination. As you do the cleaning, it is important to implement the right cleaning measures. Doing this will help protect you from encountering harmful pathogens and germs that may later cause health issues for you. Since cleaning a medical office can be quite an overwhelming task, you want to invest in a good cleaning company to do the job for you.

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