How to Clean a Veterinary Clinic

Nobody is more aware than the professionals of how important it is to keep a space clean for medical use – whether the patients are human or animal. That being said, it’s easy for the day to get busy, and for things to get overly relaxed when there isn’t a high volume of infectious treatments and it’s all routine check-ups. Understandable as that may be, it’s important to keep a sanitized and healthy workplace no matter what type of business, though most especially when any type of medical practice is involved. Here are a few ways to stay ahead of the cleanliness of your veterinary practice, so you can continue to offer your furry patients the best possible care.

Increase hand washing

Hand washing is one of those easy, generalized practices that it can be easy to overlook, and nearly always possible to be better about. Whether your practice prides itself on its hand washing standards, or knows it could be doing better, the reality is nearly everyone can do more hand washing. Particularly when it comes to handling animals and performing medical treatments, no matter how simple, it’s always smart to wash hands after for the health and well-being of future patients, but also your staff itself. Everyone’s health should be a top priority, and hand washing is a small but big way to make a positive impact in the overall cleanliness of your clinic.

Maintain accountability for checklists

Whether your checklists come in a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual breakdown – and to be fair, it should probably be a little of each – it’s important that they are completed, and completed well. Implementing a system of accountability is a great way to ensure the quality of cleaning happening in your practice is up to standard. Rather than having a list and assuming the needed items are getting done, or using a simple checkmark system, make sure everyone responsible for accomplishing tasks is identifying who is doing them and when. In this way, you can audit your practice and your staff if any concerns arise over the quality of cleaning, or if the question is whether it’s happening at all. The easiest way is to make a policy about initialing and dating cleaning efforts, so if it doesn’t appear a task is done, it’s easy to see how long ago it was marked as completed and by whom. This also makes it easier to have gentle one-on-one conversations if a particular employee is lacking, rather than making a generalized announcement to the whole staff when the employee may not necessarily realize their work could use improvements.

Hire a commercial cleaner

Although for many veterinary practices it can be feasible for the staff to participate in overall cleaning, it’s important to remember that it’s not their specialty and it’s not what they are there to do. They may be happy to pitch in, but that won’t often replace a dedicated professional service who understands how to sanitize a medical practice from top to bottom. Plus, their focus should be on the direct mission of your practice – serving your patients – and additional tasks can distract them from their work, which can ultimately impact your bottom-line. For a cleaner clinic and a more focused staff, give us a call to see how we can support your business, and help you serve our furry friends.