Cleaning Isolettes

[danielle.smith0219]

Hello,

I work in a level 3 birth center and we are currently having to shift the responsibilities of sending our isolettes to central processing for disassemble, cleaning, and reassemble to our NICU staff doing these things. How do you handle cleaning of isolettes where you work? Thank you in advance!

[rnkaytee]

We've never cleaned our own - housekeeping comes and does it. We change our isolettes once a week.

[SteveNNP, MSN, NP]

My first unit used to have the nurses clean isolettes - then they hired unit assistants whose job description included that. Now that I'm a few years older and wiser, it is absolutely ridiculous to me to have nurses cleaning large equipment like isolettes when they should be spending time with their patients on patient care. It used to take me upwards of 1-2 hours to properly break down and clean an isolette. I would bring it up to your epidemiology department - it's a terrible plan both for nurses who are already overworked, and from an infection control standpoint. Heck at this point I would straight up refuse to clean them.

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

Housekeeping does ours. Who has time for that? To break them down clean, let dry and reassemble is a 45 minute job!

[prmenrs, RN]

Our 40 bed level 3 unit had a "hospital assistant" scheduled @ all times. They did the incubators, ran labs and other errands, stocked the pt care areas, and generally 'helped'. We could function w/o them, but it was a lot less fun. They were awesome!

[NICURN29]

Our unit clerks clean all our beds.

[Bortaz, MSN, RN]

Unit secretary and nurses do ours...poorly. See my other thread.

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

Our ID department set up strict cleaning guidelines for all equipment after our unit had a huge MRSA outbreak and several swabs from various "clean" isolettes came back positive.

[Jory, MSN, APRN, CNM]

It takes training or else it is a major infection control issue. Nobody should be cleaning the isolettes unless someone from central processing specifically trains the nurses how to completely break it down, what solutions need to be used and proper assembly.

[HyperSaurus, RN, BSN]

Housekeeping does ours. Overnight we will clean a station if we moved a baby, but otherwise, we don't mess with the isolettes or cribs themselves

[katierobin23]

We have techs and care partners that are trained to break down and clean isolettes.

[danielle2000, MSN, RN]

Normally Environmental services does the task but with our giraffes we have to do it. I refuse to!