Most cleaning technicians work in schools, day care centres and nursing homes — and the same national hygiene rules apply here as in hospitals. Learn the three types of soiling, the five contact points, which hygiene profile the room has, and how to check by counting with NIR's table 7.
Introduction
NIR Rengøring is Statens Serum Institut's national infection hygiene guideline for cleaning. It is free and publicly available at hygiejne.ssi.dk. It applies not only to hospitals, but also to clinics, elderly care, day care and schools. The purpose is the same everywhere: to reduce the risk of infection spreading from surfaces that many people touch.
This is where the jobs are
The graph shows the institutional buildings in Denmark by type. Notice that primary schools, day-care institutions and nursing homes are the large groups — much larger than hospitals. Nursing homes are called «døgninstitution» (residential institution) in BBR.
Three kinds of soiling
| Soiling | Includes, for example |
|---|---|
| Stains | Dry or wet stains: marks, rings, tape residue, fingerprints, spilled coffee or oil, human biological material (e.g. faeces, vomit, blood) and small build-ups of limescale and rust. |
| Dust | Fine, smaller particles that can form a layer on contact points and surfaces and can be stirred up. |
| Litter and loose dirt | Smaller particles that are not stirred up: leaves, food scraps, bits of paper, grit, sand, hair, skin flakes, cobwebs, insects. |
Five contact points
A contact point is a place that is often touched by hands or forearms. Contact points are cleaned daily. If the room is not used every day, they are cleaned on all of the room's cleaning days. The floor is not a contact point, but it is part of the regular cleaning.
| Category | It is the contact point |
|---|---|
| Tables (e.g. dining tables, trolley tables) | The horizontal surfaces including 3 cm of the contact surface on the underside, on the accessible sides of the table. |
| Handles and grip areas | Handles and the area around them that are touched with hands or forearms. |
| Bed, couch, chairs | On a bed: from the bed frame upwards (bed rails, head- and footboards and the visible part of the frame). On chairs and sofas: the seat, the backrest, the armrests and the edges. |
| Sanitation | On the toilet: the seat surface, the toilet seat, the part of the cistern close to the body and, if present, the lid and armrests. On the washbasin: the rim. |
| Technical equipment | Where hands or forearms touch the appliance. |