Guidelines for a Clean, Safe Room

In order to keep your child’s room as safe and germ-free as possible, our housekeepers must thoroughly clean your child’s room every day. During this cleaning process, the housekeeper will need to access all areas of the room.

Limiting the amount of personal items in your child’s room allows for more thorough cleaning, which reduces the risk of infection to your child. These tips will help keep your child's room neat and tidy.

Food

• Bring only single servings of food and drink to the Hospital.
• Discard all food and beverages left open for more than 4 hours.
• Use the refrigerator in the family lounge and apply labels with your child’s name and room number for refrigerated food. All packaged/dry food in your child’s room should be in sealed containers. Be prepared to bring your own sealed containers and permanent markers for labeling. Please do not hesitate to let staff know if you need help with this.

Daily cleaning

• Please allow the housekeeping staff to enter your room at their scheduled time if at all possible. Please do not hesitate to let your nurse or another member of our team know if we need to arrange a different time.
• If your stay with us is longer than 14 days, we will partner with your family to temporarily move you out of the room so that our staff can thoroughly clean your room. Time out of the room for cleaning is estimated at 90 minutes. If you cannot be moved out of the room, we will partner with you to clean the room as best as possible.
• Please help prevent trash overflow by notifying a staff member if your trash needs to be emptied.
• Please place dirty linens in the linen hamper as soon as possible.

Personal items

• Limit the amount of personal items you have in your child’s room.
• Stuffed animals and personal blankets should be washed weekly. There are washers located on some units and several in the Connelly Resource Center for Families, located on the 8th floor of the Main Building. All washers and dryers are available free of charge.
• Avoid putting things on counters and bedside stands. Place personal items in drawers and cupboards.
• Please keep windowsill clear of all personal items.
• Avoid putting personal items on the floor of the room. If you brought an air mattress from home it must be deflated by 8 a.m. each day. Parents can reserve a nap room in the Connelly Center from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m.
• Ask your nurse about what surfaces are designated for personal items such as cards and posters from friends and family.

For families with extended hospital stays (14 days and longer):

Please bring supplies as you need them, rather than bringing supplies for the entire admission all at once, and keep no more than one week’s supply of clothing in your child’s room. Our staff can discuss what you may need to bring to the hospital and options for storing your items from home. If you are coming from out of town and this is not possible, please talk with your nurse and/or social worker, so we can best help you and your family.