Attempting to Standardize Environmental Hygiene Throughout the World

Environmental hygiene is not standardized worldwide. Some countries have enough workers but not enough materials to work with. Some countries do not have enough workers. One businessman and his companies are striving to help facilities around the world to better their environmental hygiene practices to help save patients’ lives.

Bill Bassett is that businessman, the founding director for Interclean Group, a group of companies working together to design and use the most innovative cleaning solutions across all sectors.He believes he has a gift of helping and that it is his responsibility to assist where and how he can. Bassett has spent the last 7 weeks traveling the world, going from one hospital to another to see what each facility needs to improve their environmental hygiene and how his expertise—and Interclean Group—can help them improve.

Bassett is bringing the information that he has gained to the Clean Hospitals Day Conference that will be held October 20, 2022, in Geneva, Switzerland. There, the attendees and presenters will tackle the challenge of increasing the “global visibility and recognition of the importance of health care environmental hygiene, provide stronger focus and guidance, and encourage the creation of global standards for environmental hygiene,” as noted on the Clean Hospital’s website.

Infection Control Today^® (ICT^®) spoke with Bassett about what he saw on his travels and what his goals are for the Clean Hospitals Day Conference.

Bassett explains his goals for the Clean Hospitals Day Conference: “If we can sit in one room with the 10 best cleaning managers and infection control managers and work together, and then we can take that information out to the rest of the world, and they grab on to bits, just bit by bit, we can save lives. We can save them more often wherever there is a great manager wanting to make a difference.”

During the interview, Bassett spoke of the need for trained and trainable cleaners (environmental hygiene personnel), he said that part of the problem is how much cleaners are paid, and how to convince the C-suite to pay the cleaners a higher salary. “Generally, the facilities that we see, go ahead and get the resources from the CEO and the senior management of the hospital. [The CEOs and senior management] are generally educated, trained professionals. Either they've come through business or nursing management. They can put the right business case together to make change. But there's a large group of cleaning managers out there in our hospitals, who were our best cleaners. And that's the only formal training that they've ever had. I don't know if it's a fear or a doubt from the CEOs that the cleaners shouldn't be paid more.”

Check out the interview above for more insights.