How to Reduce Germs & Illness in Kids

Video Transcript

Hi! This is Patti Billings I am a certified pediatric nurse practitioner on behalf of expertvillage.com. In this clip, we are going to talk about keeping the childcare center clean and sanitized and this applies more definitely to areas that have larger numbers of children. In home, childcare we would probably relax some of these standards although the basic principles would be the same. It’s important that the areas where children are having food prepared and having diapering are clean, smooth surfaces that can be cleaned regularly. I think when children spill things they should be wiped up quickly. So, you would want flooring that is easy to clean also. The other consideration is the play equipment that children use; especially the in-house play equipment not necessarily, jungle gyms and swings, but the toys that children play with on a daily basis get contaminated with many germs and they should be cleaned with a cleaning solution on a daily basis at the end of the childcare time. Childcare providers should have a basic knowledge of some basic principles of disposing of what we call body fluids, which would be something like you know runny stool or vomit something like that. There should be an appropriate way to clean those. There are kits on the market that sanitize those things. If not they should be cleaned with a bleach solution because they can cause germs to other children. So they should be cleaned up quickly and the toys that you choose would be things that could be cleaned. Stuffed animals are not a good choice because they are hard to clean. Stuffed animals are better left at home I think. The child’s special blanket is something that should be washed periodically. That’s probably the parent’s responsibility as well, but that is something that most children will bring to a childcare facility as a special blanket or something like that. Most of the toys that the childcare facility provides are things that should have smooth surfaces, crayons, pencils all of those things and paper of course is disposable, but the toys are things like little trucks or little tricycles and things like that things that should be at least sprayed on a daily basis with a cleansing solution. We have carpet in our office and if we have body fluids spilled, like vomit or diarrhea or something like that, we have special cleaning solutions that we use on our carpet that doesn’t harm the carpet at all and so I think carpet requires some special consideration in that it is not as easy to clean as a solid surface floor would be like linoleum or wood. They are much easier to clean because you can wet them. The carpet probably should be kept as clean as possible with regular shampooing and then picking up any body fluids or spills quickly.

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