Abstract
One of the nursing tasks is to clean patients' living space. The authors tried to identify the effects of cleaning of the bedside tables patients use every day. The investigation included cleaning methods and their effects.
Current practices were first identified by observation and a questionnaire survey of nurses. Bacterio-logical samples were collected from the bedside tables of several patients to study the effects of cleaning. The following results were obtained :
1. All the nurses surveyed answered that it was necessary to clean the bedside tables.
2. The time of cleaning and the cleaning tools used were the same among all of the nurses.
3. The cleaning procedure, however, varies.
4. Before cleaning, bacteria were detected at some of the bedside tables sampling sites.
5. After cleaning, no bacteria were detected on many of the bedside tables.
6. Some of the bacteria detected show resistance to antibiotics in the susceptibility test.
7. Since few bacteria were found after cleaning, cleaning was proven to be effective and necessary, even if each nurse uses different cleaning procedure.
