The importance of hospital decontamination was brought to the public’s attention like never before during the COVID pandemic. However, many will not be aware that the NHS launched new national standards of healthcare cleanliness in April 2021. The programme encourages a collaborative approach between clinical and non-clinical staff to ensure the continuous improvement of cleaning and disinfection throughout the healthcare environment.
Fourteen years after the introduction of the National Specifications for Cleanliness in the NHS, the new standards seek to ‘drive improvement while being flexible enough to meet the different and complex requirements of all healthcare organisations’.1
The scope
The new standards detail the general principles and definitions of cleaning and disinfection and who is responsible. Other key considerations are the frequency of clean, risk categories and standards for functional area
