Before receiving a patient, after their discharge or, effectively at the handover moment at the start of your shift, you will be confirming that the bedside is ready and suitable.

In many settings this is called the ‘bedside safety check’.

The principles of a basic bedside check:

1. Ensure all bedspaces within their area are fully prepared for patient arrival
2. Refer to suitable bedspace set-up guide
3. Any excess bedspace equipment or furniture should be removed from the area and stored appropriately
4. Once prepared, bedspaces should be identified as ‘Ready’ and secured to ensure essential set up is maintained.
5. Equipment storerooms should have all the equipment tidy and attached to mains power (as required).
6. Any broken equipment should be returned to Medical Engineering for repair.

If you have worked in critical care (or been redeployed there at some point during the pandemic) you may recognise the really useful tool put together by the London Transformation and Learning Collaborative – Critical Care Programme.

Checking and cleaning the bedspace

Principles of infection control and the national or regional standards (such as the [National Standards of Healthcare Cleanliness] (https://www.england.nhs.uk/publication/national-standards-of-healthcare-cleanliness-2021/) establish the best practice in cleaning of bedspaces and the key moments defined by local checklists and protocols will be very similar to the below flowchart.

As for frequency of cleaning? This depends on the level of infection risk within the area, but cleaning should be part of your routine work in POCU.

For example:

• Low surfaces will be cleaned twice daily in very high risk areas, but will have one full clean every week in areas of low risk
• Drip stands will receive one full clean daily and between patient use in any are they are in use
• Table should be cleaned twice daily in areas of high risk and, on full clean daily or even weekly in other areas of lower risk
• Beds should have the framed cleaned daily, the underneath cleaned weekly and its whole on discharge in any area

Do get familiarised with the cleaning protocols in your unit. Handwashing is not sufficient to prevent and control infection. In addition, cleaning and decluttering the patient’s space is vital to maintain everyone’s safety and to avoid unnecessary anxiety and worry from patients and visitors.

Do get to know the cleaning protocols of the wider POCU too. (Photo credit: Kate Neil)