Reusable patient care equipment and environmental decontamination

On 25 January 2018, HPS published ‘Roles & responsibilities for reusable patient care equipment and environmental decontamination’.

This report contains an evidence base for defining roles and responsibilities of healthcare workers on decontamination of the healthcare environment and communal reusable patient care equipment nationally. This involved the completion of a targeted review of the published literature on roles and implementation of roles and responsibilities against national findings. A survey of NHS boards was also undertaken looking at the staff involved in cleaning in clinical settings and the results of this are also included in the report.

The information gained informed the development of national recommendations to define roles and responsibilities of healthcare workers for reusable patient equipment and environmental decontamination. The key output from this review is the production of a flow chart.

This report will build on and support the 2014 ‘A-Z Template for Decontamination of Re-usable Communal Patient equipment’.