Floors, Curtains and Chairs: Getting the Surfaces Right in a Melbourne Clinic

A cleaner can only clean the clinic they're given. Two clinics with the same cleaner and the same checklist can end up very differently, because one has sealed vinyl floors and wipeable chairs and the other has carpet in the consult rooms and fabric seats in the waiting room.

If you're fitting out a new practice, refurbishing, or just wondering why one room never looks as clean as the others, the surfaces are worth a look. This post covers the ones that matter most and how to look after what you already have.

Floors

Clinical rooms: sealed sheet vinyl. Consulting, treatment and procedure rooms are easiest to keep clean with sheet vinyl that has welded seams and a coved skirting, where the floor curves up the wall instead of meeting it at a sharp corner. There are no gaps for dirt or spills to sit in, and a mop reaches the whole surface. Vinyl tiles with many joins, or timber-look planks with grooves, catch grime along every line.

Avoid carpet where spills are likely. Carpet in a consult or treatment room means a blood or body-fluid spill can't be fully cleaned with a wipe. It needs extraction cleaning, and sometimes the carpet needs replacing. If you have carpet in clinical rooms now, plan to replace it at the next refurbishment. Until then, book extraction more often and keep spill kits close.

Waiting rooms: either, if maintained. Carpet tiles work in a waiting room and soften the noise. Tiles are better than broadloom because a stained tile can be swapped out. Book hot-water extraction on a regular cycle: quarterly in a busy practice, and more often through winter, when wet shoes bring the street inside.

Looking after vinyl. Use a neutral detergent day to day. Strong disinfectant on a vinyl floor every night is rarely needed outside the clinical zones, and it dulls and wears the surface. Many clinic vinyls are maintained with a periodic machine scrub and, depending on the product, a protective coating. Follow the flooring manufacturer's guidance. Our floor polishing team will check what your floor is before quoting.

Seating

Waiting room chairs. Vinyl or similar wipeable upholstery can be cleaned and disinfected every night as part of the touch-point clean. Fabric chairs can't. They hold whatever lands on them until they are extraction-cleaned, and a wet patch from a spilled drink or an incontinent patient stays until someone deals with it.

If you have fabric seating, budget for periodic upholstery cleaning, and replace it with wipeable seating when the chairs are due. Check that seams and arms are sealed too. A wipeable chair with a split seam is no longer wipeable.

Consult room chairs are touched by every patient, on the arms especially. The same rule applies: vinyl, sealed, and checked for splits. The cleaner should report any damage rather than wiping around it.

Privacy curtains

Curtains around examination couches are handled by many hands and rarely cleaned. There are two approaches:

• Disposable curtains with a date written on them when they're hung, replaced on a set schedule and straight away if they are visibly soiled or contaminated. Simple to manage and easy to show at accreditation.
• Fabric curtains laundered on a set schedule and after any contamination, with a spare set ready so the room isn't left without one.

Either can work. What doesn't work is no schedule at all. Decide who changes them (usually the practice, sometimes the cleaner on request), write the date down and keep to it.

Blinds, walls and the small stuff

• Blinds: venetian blinds hold dust on every slat and are slow to clean. Roller blinds in a wipeable fabric are easier. Either way, put them on the weekly or monthly rotation.
• Walls: a washable paint finish in clinical rooms and around waiting room chairs, where heads and hands touch the wall. Flat paint marks and can't be cleaned.
• Toys and books in the waiting room: wipeable toys only, on a cleaning rotation, and put away during outbreaks. Fabric books and soft toys hold more than they're worth.
• Plants: real plants in clinical areas collect dust and standing water. Keep them to reception if you have them at all.

The checklist side

None of this replaces a routine clean. It makes the routine clean work. Our GP clinic cleaning checklist lists what should happen each visit, and reading a hospital-grade disinfectant label covers the products.

When we take on a practice, the supervisor's first walkthrough notes the surfaces room by room: what can be cleaned well, what needs periodic work, and what is worth replacing when the budget allows. After that, every visit is signed in and out on our app inside a geofence around the practice, with a photo, and the supervisor inspects every three weeks.

We clean medical practices across Melbourne, including in Camberwell, Greensborough, Nunawading and Lilydale. See medical cleaning Melbourne, or ask for a walkthrough and we will tell you which surfaces are working against you.