Ward Decoration Guidelines
It is important to staff, patients and visitors that we celebrate significant festivals of all faiths/beliefs within our hospitals, but we must be able to ensure that we can continue to maintain a clean and safe environment for our patients. With the increasing number of COVID positive patients within our hospitals and rising transmission rates in our local communities it is important that we ensure that our wards and departments are clean, tidy and uncluttered and that we can decontaminate any clinical area quickly and effectively.
However we recognise it is important for the morale of everyone that such important events can continue to be recognised and have drawn up the guidance detailed below as we start to prepare for Christmas and other important events whilst we continue to live with the changes COVID has brought into all of our lives.
Whilst we actively encourage the use of noticeboards as an essential communication tool it is important that all notices and communication tools are laminated and able to be wiped clean.
• Only 1 Christmas tree should be erected and decorated for display in wards and departments, this should be in a communal area to be enjoyed by all i.e. reception areas, wide corridors, but keep exit routes clear and avoid areas where it can be knocked or touched frequently. Please do not put decorations into staff rooms this year.
• If your areas are planning to use decorative lights, they should be either new ones (from a reputable source) or they are ones that have a current PAT test sticker on them. All other lights should not be used. Decorative lights should have a PAT test before they are packed away e.g. in January after Christmas.
• Battery operated lights do not need PAT testing.
• Only low voltage LED lights are to be used
• No Fibre Optic tress to be used where the light source in the base of the tree and a disc rotates from the heat of the light bulb (please note that fibre optics break easily which could result in sharp needles that could cause an injury).
• Real Christmas trees are not allowed on wards or departments, they are a fire risk.
• Decorations are not permitted in patient areas where clinical care is being delivered i.e. bays, consulting room
• Snow spray on internal glass windows and departments cannot be used
• Decorations must not be placed on handrails, door handles or other surfaces and touch points, these must be free to enable cleaning and decontamination
• Enhanced decorations such as a Santa grotto, etc. should not be used.
• Only decorations that can be cleaned after use should be used. Anything that cannot be cleaned, such as tinsel must not be put in place
• Should a ward be closed for an infection outbreak during the time the decorations are in place, the decorations must be discarded. Once an outbreak has been closed and the ward decontaminated you can put up a new tree
• Decorations that hang from the ceilings cannot be used.
• We must not put sticky tape of any kind on the walls of any wards or departments. Blue or white tack is allowed.
This guidance applies trust wide and across all clinical and non-clinical areas. The guidance will be updated in line with should there be any changes in pandemic measures.