Working in surgical centers has taught me that healthcare cleaning is about much more than appearance. Every cleaning procedure is focused on infection prevention, reducing cross contamination, and protecting patient safety. Many of these same healthcare cleaning practices can also be applied to residential and commercial environments to create cleaner and healthier spaces.

In surgical centers, we use EPA registered disinfectants, proper dwell times, microfiber cleaning systems, and personal protective equipment (PPE) to help reduce the spread of harmful bacteria, germs, and viruses. These same methods can improve cleaning results in offices, schools, apartment buildings, and homes where high touch surfaces such as door handles, restrooms, countertops, and shared equipment are used every day.

Healthcare cleaning also emphasizes consistency and training. Proper disinfecting procedures, hand hygiene, bloodborne pathogen awareness, and quality assurance inspections all help create safer environments for employees, residents, customers, and visitors. As cleaning professionals, we play an important role in protecting public health and reducing the spread of illness in the communities we serve.

Organizations such as the International Janitorial Cleaning Services Association and the IJCSA Janitorial Services Directory continue to promote higher standards throughout the cleaning industry by supporting education, safety, and professional healthcare cleaning practices.

Great customer service in the janitorial industry means caring for and understanding your customer needs. More specifically, it is important for the customers to be heard. It is also important to have open communication, reliability, trust and be proactive in problem solving.

Professional cleaning is not just about cleaning the surface of things, but more importantly getting to the root of the dirt and debris.  Members of IJCSA Business Directory are invested with their customers and make them their TOP priority. IJCSA members are thoroughly trained and certified in a vast arena of janitorial serves.

With any business having good communication before during and after is a key role in not only maintaining your client base but also ensuring the quality of your work. 

When you communicate with your customers on a regular basis you will always receive good and bad feedback, at the end of the day you will learn the best way to handle each and every situation. You can then adjust, learn and grow with each customer, this builds a healthy relationship with them and helps pass along to future customers that not only do you communicate well but you welcome any and all feedback they give.

All in all, providing good customer service can be the defining factor in how well your business with do. 

Cleaning employees can come in contact with blood or other bodily fluids during normal everyday tasks, sometimes when they least expect it. It could be while taking out the trash that contains a used needle, handling contaminate laundry, or cleaning up after someone who is sick. Bloodborne pathogens can cause serious diseases such as Hepatitis B and HIV, so employees need to understand that exposure can happen even when working outside of a healthcare setting. Knowing what to look for and how exposure can happen allows employees to protect themselves instead of realizing there was a risk after the fact.

Employees should always use universal precautions when there is a possibility of coming into contact with blood or potentially infectious body fluids. This means treating blood and certain body fluids as thought they could be infectious and using the proper protective practices and PPE. Employees also need to know how to safely handle contaminated laundry and trash, properly clean and disinfect an area, dispose of contaminated materials, and wash their hands immediately after removing gloves or other protective equipment. These precautions not only protect the employee doing the cleaning but also help prevent exposing coworkers, clients, or anyone else who may enter the area.

Cleaning and janitorial employees work with chemicals everyday. and it is important that they understand the hazards that can come with them. Even common cleaning products can cause serious harm if they are used incorrectly, mixed with incompatible chemicals, or used without the proper protection. Chemical exposure can happen through inhalation, skin contact, ingestion, or other means, and the effects can range from irritation and allergic reactions to burns, respiratory problems, serious illness, or even death. Employees need to understand what products they are working with, follow labels and safety procedures, use the appropriate protective equipment, and know where to find safety information when they need it.

One of the most dangerous mistakes an employee can make is assuming that because two products are safe to use separately, thy are safe to mix together. Incompatible chemicals can react and create toxic gases, fires, explosions, or other dangerous conditions. Proper training helps employees recognize these hazards before an accident happens instead of learning about them after someone gets hurt. Understanding chemical hazards protects the employee using the product, their coworkers, our clients, and anyone else who may be in the area. Chemical safety should be part of every cleaning company's training because protecting people is always more important than simply getting the job done.

It is extremely important for cleaning employees and staff to understand Bloodborne pathogens because they may come into contact with blood or other potential infectious things while performing tasks and duties. Bloodborne pathogens are microorganisms found in human blood than can cause diseases, which have hepatitis B and C, as well as, HIV. Knowing the risks allowing cleaning employees to take the correct precautions and protect themselves and others.

Proper training and awareness can help prevent accidental exposures to Bloodborne pathogens. Cleaning staff should always understand the importance of wearing PPE, such as gloves, eye protection, closed toe shoes ect. They should also know how to properly clean and disinfect contaminated areas, properly dispose of contaminated materials and avoid touching around their mouth, eyes ect. while working. Even a small cut or open wound in the skin can open a huge issues to a pathogen to enter the body. 

Knowing how to respond if an exposure happens is just as equally important to be aware of. If an employee has a needle stick, cut, or other exposure to bodily fluids of any kind it needs to be reported and handle by a medical professional immediately. 

All in all, Bloodborne pathogen awareness in the workplace is very important to all staff. 

As IJCSA members, we put our clients first. Great customer service is a priority, and we want our clients to experience the exceptional service that comes from working with true professionals. That means really listening, understanding each client’s expectations and preferences, acknowledging concerns, and finding solutions when those expectations aren’t being met. Our goal is to make sure every client is completely satisfied with the services they receive.

Being an IJCSA member is about more than restoring or refreshing a home or business. It’s about a commitment to meeting each client’s individual needs with genuine care, a friendly personality, and a smile. Come meet the members of IJCSA here in our IJCSA Business Directory.

Properly cleaning a healthcare facility is very important because you are dealing with an environment where people may already be sick or have a weaker immune system. When cleaning a regular office, the main goal may be to keep the building clean and presentable. In a healthcare facility, cleaning also plays an important role in infection prevention and keeping patients, employees, visitors, and cleaning staff safer. This is why medical cleaning requires proper training and more attention to detail.

One of the biggest concerns when cleaning healthcare facilities is cross-contamination. Many people touch the same surfaces throughout the day, including door handles, light switches, counters, chairs, restroom fixtures, and other high-touch surfaces. A cleaning employee needs to understand that simply wiping down a surface is not always enough. The correct cleaning products and disinfectants need to be used, and disinfectants need to stay on the surface for the proper contact time. Employees should also understand how to use personal protective equipment (PPE) and follow the facility's infection-control procedures.

Another important part of healthcare cleaning is understanding the difference between cleaning and disinfecting. Cleaning helps remove dirt and other material from a surface, while disinfecting is used to kill or inactivate germs on surfaces. Both steps can be important depending on the area being cleaned. Cleaning employees also need to be careful with their equipment and supplies so they don't carry contamination from one room or area into another. Following proper procedures every time is important because taking shortcuts can reduce the effectiveness of the cleaning process.

As a cleaning company, I believe training is one of the most important parts of providing medical cleaning services. Employees need to understand why they are following each procedure instead of just being told what to clean. When employees understand things like infection prevention, cross-contamination, bloodborne pathogens, high-touch surfaces, PPE, disinfectants, and contact time, they can better understand the responsibility that comes with working in a healthcare environment.

At the end of the day, healthcare cleaning is about more than making a building look good. It is about providing a clean and properly maintained environment for the people who receive care and work there every day. A professional cleaning company should take medical facility cleaning seriously, properly train its employees, use the right products, and follow established procedures. Healthcare facilities looking for professional cleaning companies can also visit the IJCSA Janitorial Service Directory to find janitorial service providers.

A clean atmosphere is one that should be offered no matter where we go. Imagine visting a place, any place at all, that has no janitorial staff. Gross!

The janitorial (or custodial) staff offers a safe and sanitary environment for our children, staff and any visitors to a school, office, or any cooperate setting. 

Janitorial cleaning ranges anywhere from keeping hallways free of debris or slipping hazards, bathrooms sanitation and even can include lawn maintenance. 

Janitorial services are a very important role in our daily lives. They help keep us safe and healthy while also providing a clean aesthetic to the places we work, visit and learn.

Healthcare facility cleaning is not the same job as cleaning a home or a typical office, even though the tools can look similar. The people inside a medical space often have weaker immune systems, open wounds, or medical devices that give germs a direct path into the body, so a shortcut that would go unnoticed with general commercial cleaning can directly contribute to a healthcare-associated infection (HAI) in a clinical setting. HAIs are not a rare or theoretical risk — CDC data puts the number at roughly 1.7 million reported HAIs a year in the U.S., with tens of thousands of resulting deaths, and no population is exempt, including newborns and otherwise healthy patients in for routine procedures. A medical cleaning and disinfection team that treats every surface as a possible pathogen reservoir, even when it looks spotless, is the first line of defense against that risk — which is exactly why hiring a certified, properly trained janitorial service matters so much in this industry.

That's why effective infection control cleaning has to go beyond wiping a surface until it looks clean. True disinfection requires physically cleaning a surface first so dirt and debris don't block the disinfectant from making contact, then applying an EPA-registered, hospital-grade disinfectant and leaving it wet for its full listed contact/dwell time — something that's easy to rush past under time pressure but that makes or breaks whether a surface is actually decontaminated versus simply wet-wiped. High-touch surface disinfection — door handles, bed rails, call buttons, light switches, countertops — deserves extra attention because these points are touched constantly by patients, staff, and visitors, making them the most likely surfaces to spread infection if they're missed or wiped dry too soon. On top of that, proper hand hygiene and personal protective equipment (PPE) protocols — gloved, gowned, and masked in the correct order, with hands washed before gloving and after degloving — protect the cleaning team itself from bloodborne pathogens like HIV, Hepatitis B, and Hepatitis C, which spread through contact with blood or other potentially infectious materials (OPIM), not just visibly contaminated surfaces.

Ultimately, properly cleaning a healthcare facility protects three groups at once: the patients who are most vulnerable to infection, the staff and visitors moving through the space, and the cleaning professionals themselves. Every step in a healthcare-adjacent cleaning protocol — from sequencing PPE correctly, to honoring disinfectant dwell times, to knowing exactly what to do in the first minutes after a sharps or bloodborne pathogen exposure — exists because skipping it has a real, measurable cost. Understanding why each step matters, not just memorizing what the step is, is what turns routine environmental cleaning into a genuine infection-control measure. Facilities and clients looking for a qualified provider can find one through the IJCSA https://www.ijcsa.org/Janitorial-Service-Directory-Find-A-Janitorial-Service-JanitorialServices, which connects them with cleaning companies trained to this same OSHA- and CDC-aligned standard.