For years trolleys have been a staple in aged care laundry for providing ease of transport of linen and personal clothing between the residents’ rooms to the laundry and back to the residents’ rooms again.
We have all felt the impact of the pandemic during the last couple of years, and now more than ever it’s important to have appropriate and reliable trolleys in place to assist staff to move soiled and clean laundry throughout the facility in the safest way possible.
The first part of the process is the collection of soiled laundry from the residents’ rooms. Soiled laundry should always be placed into the designated skip bag so that when it comes time to launder, it can be done exactly the way it should be without being mixed up with laundry that requires a different laundering process.
Laundry Solutions Australia provides a wide variety of bag and lid colours for easy designation, as well as skip bins in single, double, and triple. Depending on the size of the facility the correct collection trolley size will allow staff to collect as much soiled linen as possible, avoiding multiple trips to the same areas.
Once soiled laundry has been collected it should be processed as early as possible, holding it for too long in its soiled state undermines the wash effectiveness and increases the chances of cross infection. By pre-sorting during the collection, means that staff don’t have to sort through soiled laundry during the processing stage.
Staff should always be wearing the appropriate PPE when processing soiled laundry including gloves, apron, mask, and eyewear. It is imperative that everything possible is done to protect residents as well as staff.
Soluseam bags are great way to handle heavily soiled, foul and infectious laundry so staff do not need to handle the potentially infectious laundry. They simply place the soluseam bag in the washer and the seam of the bag will open up when the washer fills with water.
Once the washing has gone through the appropriate wash cycles, clean wet laundry can be moved from the washer directly to the dryer via a portable folding table. These portable folding tables will stop laundry staff from having to pick up any wet laundry in their hands. Likewise, once the drying is complete, dry laundry can be moved directly onto a portable folding table where it can be folded and placed into a linen distribution trolley ready to be redistributed to the facility residents.
By having all the appropriate trolley equipment, aged care facilities can ensure that their staff are always able to ensure best practices when it comes to minimising risk of infection. While this is the biggest benefit, it is not the only one. Having all the correct trolley products allows staff to work in the most efficient manner from start to finish of the laundering process.
Laundry Solutions Australia designs and manufactures a wide range of aged care specific laundry trolleys and accessories right here in Australia for our customers large and small.
We also provide free consulting on all aspects of aged care laundry processes to our customers.
