Minimising OHS Risks At Armadale Hospital With The i-mop

Floor cleaning in healthcare environments can be a highly labour intensive and manual process.

Mopping large areas by hand can pose significant OHS risks. In addition, the strict requirements for infection control and reliability mean it is critical that the right equipment is used for optimal healthcare cleaning outcomes.

Following an audit of patient support processes that identified manual strain risk from the conventional flat mopping systems they were using, the Patient Support Services team at Armadale Hospital needed to find a better solution for their day surgery floor cleaning requirements.

For this, they turned to the i-mop xl , the revolutionary industrial floor mop machine from i-team. The i-mop has helped the team at Armadale Hospital to eliminate virtually all the OHS risk from using manual mopping systems, and enabled superior floor cleaning performance.

14 months after the team implemented the i-mop to improve their hospital floor cleaning, we paid a visit to the hospital to see how things was going. Here are some of the key healthcare cleaning insights from the Patient Support Services team:

• The i-mop is used every day in an end-of-day clean from 4pm.
• The i-mop is used to clean the vinyl areas in the wards, corridors, and waiting/recovery rooms.
• A neutral floor detergent is used in the solution tank.
• A second set of batteries were purchased to enable continuous operation with no downtime waiting for recharging.
• The regular blue brushes are used.
• Staff are all well-trained in daily machine maintenance. This has meant that, in a 14-month period, they have had no breakdowns and no maintenance costs.
• The i-mop has eliminated all manual mopping in the day surgery unit.
  
  

"Extremely manoeuvrable, much easier to manoeuvre than other scrubbers."

- Patient Support Team Member

We were blown away to see an i-mop , which was over 14 months old, in almost perfect condition. This was testament to an excellent team and a thorough training regime to ensure end-of-clean maintenance happened every day after all floors had been cleaned. See the 14-month old i-mop (left) next to a brand new i-mop below – you can hardly tell the difference!