Taking Down and Rehanging Cubicle Curtains Without Leaving Rooms Bare

Washing a curtain is the part everyone pictures. The harder part happens on the unit: getting twelve or thirty curtains off their tracks and back on again while patients are still in the building and nursing staff are working around you. A good curtain change is mostly logistics, with a ladder in the middle of it.

What an installer is actually doing

Most cubicle curtains have a solid fabric panel and a mesh top running along the upper edge. The mesh header hangs from hooks that ride in a ceiling track. Taking one down means reaching the track, releasing each hook in order, usually folding the curtain so the used side stays turned inward, and getting it into a bag or cart without brushing it against walls. Hanging it again means seating every hook, checking the curtain runs end to end, and making sure it clears the bed rail.

None of that is difficult, but it's repetitive, it happens above head height, and it happens in rooms where people are often unwell. That's why an installer's job at Accord Curtains is described the way it is: they're the face of the company to the customer, taking down and installing cubicle curtains at medical facilities and transporting them to and from the Accord office. They wear a uniform for a reason. Staff and visitors should see at once who they are.

Small parts that cause big delays

• Track hooks. They wear, bend or go missing. Count them at the inventory visit rather than discovering a short curtain on the day.
• Ladder access. A bed that can't move, a headwall full of equipment, or a low ceiling changes how much room an installer has to work.
• Curtain sizes. A curtain that's an inch or two off will hang visibly wrong, so keep the dimensions in the record.
• Track condition. Ask installers to flag a stuck carrier or a loose track instead of working around it.

Keep every room covered

Patients need privacy while their curtain is in the wash. The usual answer is a clean spare. Accord keeps spare curtains it can install, so a room is never left open while its own set is out. Done well, a patient sees one curtain replaced by another, and nothing more.

There are two common ways to run it. In the first, installers bring clean replacements, swap them in, and take the used set away. In the second, the facility takes its own curtains down and Accord's Pick Up Take Back service collects them. They come back washed, dried and ironed, wrapped in plastic protection with hangers, ready to go up. Facilities pick whichever fits their staffing. Some use both, depending on the unit.

Scheduling around census

The calendar matters as much as the crew. Work done in a unit full of patients goes slower and bothers more people than the same work in a half-empty one. Some practical habits help.

• Ask bed management which rooms are empty or due for discharge, and start there.
• Work floor by floor, or wing by wing. Accord began doing floor-by-floor take-downs in 2009 because a customer asked for it, and it's still an easy way to keep the work contained.
• Avoid shift changes and meal delivery, when hallways are at their busiest.
• Agree on one point of contact per unit, so installers aren't asking three people the same question.

The agreed date in a Routine Scheduled Cleaning program is not a surprise. Accord discusses it with Environmental Services and Infection Control, walks the facility, takes the inventory and fixes a date. The point of planning ahead is that nurses on the unit already know a crew is coming.

The wrap-up that people skip

When the last curtain goes up, the job still isn't done. Each curtain gets scanned as it's re-hung, which writes the date, time, employee and room to the record. Then a report arrives. That report is what lets you confirm that every room on the schedule was covered, rather than trusting that nobody missed one.

If a change goes badly, it's usually for dull reasons: a short count, a wrong size, a unit nobody told. Almost all of them are solved before the day, with an honest inventory and a conversation with the people who staff the floor.

To plan a take-down and re-hang around your census, call Accord Curtains at (614) 340-9900 or email info@accordcurtains.com to book a curtain inventory.