Background The National Standards of Healthcare Cleanliness 2021 (NHS England and NHS Improvement) apply to all healthcare environments, replacing the national specifications for cleanliness in the NHS. They encourage continuous improvement, combining mandates, guidance and recommendations of good practice. Some of the standards are mandatory and there is a ‘compliance grid’ supporting auditing and monitoring of quality. They act as a benchmark against which to compare services, assisting in establishing delivery of safe effective cleaning.

Method The Infection Control Lead and Cleaning Services Manager reviewed the National Standards and compliance grid, adapting them for a hospice environment. In addition, the Hospice Cleaning Charter was amended. Cleaning responsibilities were reviewed across the cleaning services, nursing and maintenance teams. The new standards were tested and were found to be suitable for use in the hospice environment and a new cleaning audit tool was implemented

Findings The new audit tool was introduced in October 2021, results demonstrated that two of the wards were meeting the cleaning standards, however, one ward was not meeting some of the standards.

Percentage of standard compliance

Date     Ward A Ward B Ward C

October 21  62%   91%   91%

November 21 75%   95%   91%

January 22  94%   95%   95%

The Housekeeping Supervisors had further training, which was supported by an accredited training course with a particular focus on new methods of cleaning. All cleaning staff on ward A undertook additional internal training and cleaning was monitored by the supervisors.

Conclusions The Housekeeping team were keen to improve standards to achieve the national standards.

National standards have been challenging to implement due to their health care focus and the challenges of training staff over the COVID pandemic.