Break room and refrigerators

Specialties Operating Room

Published

HOW does your OR keep the frig and break room tidy and clean? Has anyone come up with a way to motivate grown-ups to clean up after themselves? We have 2 huge frigs and a small one and they are jammed with stuff. There's always some nice folks who come along and clean up, but that gets old. Anyone share a good trick or two?

Thanks Deb

Specializes in O.R., ED, M/S.

On Fridays everything that isn't in a commercial container gets tossed! Everyone knows this and takes stuff home. Soft drinks, as long as they are not opened get to stay. All others in the the trash. We have two microwaves and one is dedicated for fish, since we have a few people who love fish. The other is a NO-NO!

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Specializes in Operating Room.

The Infection Control Linc Nurses in our unit draw up a monthly schedule and every one gets a day when they have to clean the refrigerator. It gets done dayly so grime never builds up.

If some one does not take his/her turn they are given a whole week to clean as their punishment and their name and omission gets mentioned in the monthly unit meeting which is minuted and copied to Nursind Office where the offence is recorded on their file. It has so far never happened as they are all to affraid of the embarasement.

Having said that the tea room is for nursing staff, house keeping and general assistants only.

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Everyone in our OR has some job to do other than nursing and scrubbing.We have our own rooms and the fridges we are assigned to.We do it all ourselves.Believe me it is a burden on us but it makes our work space more comfortable each month we have to sign off that we have done our chores like little children.

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Specializes in OR.

We have signs posted that the fridge will be cleaned out once a week, but it never happens. They are disgusting. It is so bad that even the freezers stink, and I'm still trying to figure out what can stink so badly when it's frozen. The refrigerators are stuffed so full that if you don't get there first thing in the morning, you have to shove your food in there and hope it fits. If you bring a sandwich, chances are someone with a heavy lunch will put theirs on top of yours and smash it.

The microwaves are just as bad. We have 3, and it's not enough for the amount of staff we have. Nobody ever cleans them out either. I know whenever I heat up my food, I make sure to add an extra paper towel to ensure that nothing touches that nasty microwave. On the rare occasion that I open it up and it is clean, I am shocked. The tables are the same way. I remember one day I saw an open bottle of water sitting on one of the tables, and it was there three days later. At that point, I took initiative and threw the thing away. I still can't understand why people can't clean up after themselves. There's no way they do that at home.

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Specializes in orthopaedics, perioperative.

I prefer not to use the fridges at work. I never use the microwaves, as they are dirtier. I'm tired of cleaning up other peoples' messes in the rooms, and I'm not about to do it in the fridges/microwaves if I don't use them. It feels like the breakroom is a dorm most days. LOL

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.

Fridge gets cleaned at 10 pm, you either have your stuff out or it's gone. Sounds strict, but the fridge situation got ridiculous, and came down to this.

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