Are your RN's mopping floors??

[nurselily3]

Recently our brilliant hospital decided that we needed to spend 4 million dollars on hiring a consulting firm to help us out with a few problems. I am relatively new to the OR (1 1/2 years) and don't understand all the in's and out's.

SO...now we are trying to fix a few things like ...turn over time. We are a major Trauma Level 1 hospital in our area, we do about 700 or so cases a month (I think). We are also a Magnet Hospital. To get to the point, the consulting firm has suggested and is implementing the RN's and Scrubs (a lot of whom are RN's) to clean their own rooms...mop, etc....and then turn around and open the room (sterile supplies and all) for the next case.

Housekeeping has been eliminated. This is not a situation where we will be helping out, we will be ALONE to clean rooms. I want to help out as much as the next guy... and I'm not saying I'm above helping, but I don't feel that this is an effective use of my time, degree or my expertise. Nowhere was it mentioned by our consulting firm that time would be built in for changing mop heads and getting clean water, or putting on clean scrubs between cases. I don't feel that this is good, safe patient care OR time efficient!! These tasks will be in addition to opening the room, interviewing the next patient, making sure the next case cart is complete (and hunting down stuff if it isn't), and bringing the patient into the room.

How many of you are doing this?? Specifically cleaning your own room without the help of housekeeping and then opening sterile supplies?? How is your turnover time? Ours is approximately 38 minutes. Communication from the consulting firm is terrible...they haven't told us what time they want. What is your infection rate?? Are there any other suggestions about fixing our problem other than swinging a mop?? I don't remember having that in my clinicals!! Remember we are a teaching place with anesthesia residents that take forever to get anything done, not to mention the surgical residents doing the cases. Is this really efficient?? The nurses here are UPSET!!!...some talking about leaving, some writing the Chief Nursing Operator at the hospital, some talking about calling the Magnet office. This firm has made several changes, some good...some not so great. This, however, takes the cake.

Please.....I need some feedback on what other places the same size are doing. Maybe I could suggest something that will keep both ends of the stick happy.

Thanks.

[cwazycwissyRN, RN]

I do believe the question was about the circulator taking on the duty of housekeeping along with other responsabilities during turn over. I am usually a rover. I come in at 1030 a, give lunch reliefs, breaks, and rove from room to room assisting where needed.....beginning of cases, end of cases, and yes helping turn rooms over.. I do not believe it is about whether we are above mopping/cleaning (which I do, I have the time to do it.) It is about whether the circulating nurse in the room has the time to have that expectation included in amoungst the other tasks they have to get the room turned over in a timely manner. Of course I have time to do it because I am not interviewing ect as another poster so nicely put it. I worked in a facility where it was part of the circulators duties and it was just NOT time effective. Inevitably the circulating nurse was the hold up on turn over because we had sooo many responsiblilites in the turn over spectrum that it was just not a realistic expectation. Perhaps this is where the original posters sentiments are.??? ???

[medpsychRN]

Wondering if we work in the same place. LOL! We too had someone come out and survey the hospital. We are now being told ways to work more "efficiently". My suggestion of asking the employees who work there (and save 4 million) fell on deaf ears.

Although they may have had some good suggestions, there are some that are just plain dumb. I still like where I work and quitting is not on the agenda. So, I don't have a solution. It will be interesting to see how things shake out but I expect some of these bright ideas will soon fall to the wayside.

[talaxandra]

I don't work in OR so maybe this isn't any of my business, but a few people have mentioned that mopping isn't beneath them. I didn't get a sense from the OP that that was the problem - more that 1/ it hardly seems cost effective, and 2/ it seems like the OR staff are already busy enough. I'm assuming, BTW, that advisers aren't reccomending the hospital hire more nurses...

[witnurse]

It's not a matter of beinbg "selective". Quite a few LTC facilities have policies against housekeeping cleaning up "solid" wastes like BM or chunky puke.

As for the cleaning in the OR, we ALL pitch in for turnover time. It's called teamwork.

However, to get rid of housekeeping in the OR will slow down the turnover time.

I work in a small rural hospital. We always clean our floors, and and all the surfaces b/w cases. We also wash our own instruments and put them through wash sterilize. I scrub and circulate and work PACU as well as med/surg/Icu/ED/Employee Health/Infection Control/Education/Regulations Coordinator. Housekeeping does our terminal cleaning however.

Our OR Nurse Manager is an LPN who has worked at this facility over 25 years. She has been an excellent teacher and mentor. Some of our newer staff members have a real problem with her being an LPN. I don't but wonder how others feel?

Witnurse1