How cleaning is checked in hospitals — NIR's hygiene profiles
Hygiene profile, quality profile, contact points and table 7
Introduction
NIR Rengøring is Statens Serum Institut's national guideline for cleaning. In hospitals it is used to manage and check the cleaning: each room gets a profile, and after cleaning you can count whether the room is clean enough.
Hygiene profile and quality profile
The hygiene profile is about infection and the contact points. The quality profile is about the cleaning quality of the room's four object groups: furniture, walls, floor and ceiling. The starting point is that the two profiles go together. The profile is assigned according to what the room is used for, how many people use it and how much dirt can be expected.
| The hospital | Examples of rooms (the list is not exhaustive) |
|---|---|
| Profile 5 | Operating theatre, sterile production, packing and storage of sterile goods, high-bay stores with sterile goods, specialist laboratory. |
| Profile 4 | Patient room, bathroom and toilet, baby changing room, delivery room, medication room, clean storage and linen storage, clean sluice room, laboratories, examination and treatment rooms. |
| Profile 3 | Corridor on a clinical ward, chapel, offices on clinical wards, changing rooms, staff rooms, cleaning rooms, dirty utility room, waiting room by clinical areas. |
The contact points
Contact points are places that are often touched by hands and forearms. They are cleaned daily. The floor is not a contact point. NIR divides them into five categories: tables (incl. 3 cm of the underside), handles and grip areas, bed, couch and chairs, sanitary fittings and technical equipment. On a bed, the contact point is from the bed frame up: bed rail, headboard and footboard and the visible part of the frame.
Table 7: how much is allowed?
The inspection takes place right after cleaning, before the room is used. You look at all five contact points and count clusters of stains (P), dust (S) and litter and loose dirt (AL) for the whole room. The room is approved if none of the numbers is higher than allowed.
| Permitted clusters P/S/AL | Up to and including 15 m² | Over 15 to 35 m² | Over 35 to 60 m² | Over 60 to 100 m² |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Profile 5 | 0/0/0 | 0/0/0 | 0/0/1 | 0/1/1 |
| Profile 4 | 0/0/1 | 0/0/1 | 0/1/1 | 0/1/2 |
| Profile 3 | 0/0/1 | 0/1/1 | 0/1/2 | 0/1/3 |
In profile 3 there must never be human biological stains. Rooms over 100 m² are not included in the table.
Inspection and documentation
- 01The inspection should take place regularly, e.g. at least 1 time per quarter, and it must be documented.
- 02Before the inspection, you should calibrate: agree on what counts as a cluster.
- 03The inspection can be internal or external. You carry out your own self-check when you are finished.
- 04If the room is not approved, you follow the organisation's action plan.
The graph shows how many hospital and institutional buildings there are in Denmark. Notice how few hospitals there are compared with nursing homes (residential institutions) — but a hospital often consists of many buildings.