Designing of care homes should ideally be a collaborative effort of different stakeholders, one of them is inputs of the clinical and nursing staff.
While normal assisted living facilities and low dependence care homes may not require specialised areas like a Sluice Room, however Care Homes who offer Rehabilitation Care, Memory Care and High Dependence Care often have a sluice room.
Sluice room is a closed area where human waste is properly and safely disposed of. It is an area where used disposables such as incontinence pads and bedpans are dealt with, and medical and surgical instruments are sterilized and disinfected.
Essentially, Sluice Room is a place where waste is disposed and instruments are cleaned.
The idea behind the design of this room is to help prevent other sanitation facilities from being contaminated with human waste and ensure that the movement of all waste products is accountable to a single end destination.
While developed countries have well defined policies and guidelines for Designing and operating Sluice Room in Aged Care facilities, unfortunately in India we still have a long way to customise the guidelines for Senior Citizen Care Homes.
Though National Guidelines for Infection Prevention and Control in Healthcare Facilities, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, and the national initiative ‘Kayakalp’, for sanitation and cleanliness in Public Health Facilities in India, Government of India briefly mentions about Sluice Room, however in my view the importance of sluice room has been undermined.
Since there are no national level standards and guidelines for sluice room in Elderly Care facilities in India, hence it is recommended that policy makers should throw some light on this subject and develop the national standards.
The document can be accessed on https://www.ddcdolphin.com/ or can be downloaded here (Sluice Room in Care Homes) or can be viewed below