Question: Does the nursing staff at your facility have cleaning assignments?

[deespoohbear]

I have a question for everyone. Does the nursing staff at your facility have assigned cleaning duties? I was posting on another thread and I happened to mention that at our facility we have assigned cleaning duties. Some of the cleaning duties entail cleaning the med room and the med room fridge, cleaning our nurses's stations (dust and such), dusting the exterior of the crash cart, checking for outdates, and the list goes on. Is the common pracitice in hospitals and LTC facilities? This is the only hospital I have worked for since I got of nursing school. I work for small, rural facility with about 85 beds total. On the thread I was mentioning this, another poster acted really suprised that we had cleaning duties. Just want to know if this is commonplace. Thanks.

[purplemania, BSN, RN]

At our 450+ bed county hospital the charge nurses are responsible for making sure the fridge, med room, playroom (pedi unit), treatment room are cleaned and stocked. Usually this translates in each person, aide included, taking an assignment. Housekeeping does all the room cleaning. We have to move our own furniture as our clients can be infants or teens and requirements differ. This seems to work for us.

[mustangsheba]

Keeping the reefers, the med cart, and the nursing areas clean are reasonable responsibilities. Mopping, vacuuming, cleaning rooms after a discharge or if a toilet overflows are chores that should be taken care of by housekeeping staff, who have the equipment and the expertise to use it efficiently. We need to keep ourselves and clean as possible while doing patient care and I don't see mopping floors and cleaning rooms and toilets as compatible with safe patient care.

[dawngloves, BSN, RN]

I don't think I'd want to be a patient in a hospital where the nurses had to go off to mop and vacuum!I can imagine running to code with a toilet brush in my hand!

This reminds me of a picture I saw from back in the day of nurses cooking their patients meals. My patients would starve to death!!

Could that be around the corner?

[wildtime88]

Cooking? Actually if you think about it, a lot of the food that is served can be microwaved, at many places the food already comes pre-prepared to heat in serve. It just comes in large containers. Many school systems serve nothing but individual tv style dinners. If someone figures this out, there is no reason they would have for keeping a kitchen staff on and could save some more money to throw in their pockets. Pop in an individual TV dinner and put in on a regular plate and dinner is done.

We will just add it to yet another official nursing duty.

As a side note we can add this to the customer service duties.

The nursing staff will personally take your food order from a wide selection of menue options, then the meals are individually and personally prepared and served to our patients and visitors by the nursing staff. Tipping is not required.

[Jenny P]

LOL, Wildtime! I WANT A TIP if I'm gonna be a waitress!!

This summer I was a nursing convention and some of us were talking and an ED nurse told how cleaning guerneys was listed on the RN duties list! She found herself cleaning a guerney when the LPN was drawing up Versed for the MD!!!!! When she told the LPN to switch, the LPN told her it wasn't on the list of LPN duties and she didn't have to do it! It really WASN'T on the LPN duties list; and the supervisor backed her up! But the LPN should not have been drawing up and intending to administer Versed either (IV push meds by LPNs are not covered under the Nurse Practice Act in our state).

We need to remember that our primary function as nurses is to give safe nursing care. Somehow the vision of being housekeepers and nurses doesn't fit with safe-- cleanig toilets and delivering food trays and doing sterile dressing changes doesn't seem very sanitary or safe to me!

[cinny071]

I have worked in LTC as a Cna and I can remember when the meals were sent up on a small elevater and we "fixed the trays and sometimes that included buttering the bread and pouring the ice water. After the meals we collected the trays and scraped then into large "wash tubs" and then sent the carts to the kitchen.

We also stripped and washed the the "patients units once a week on their bath day at the bigining of the week.

And we put the patients clean cothes away everyday in the afternoon on 7-3.

Thats all I think of right know.

[sleepyhead]

I'm fortunate enough to work at a large hospital where neither RN's (we don't have LPN's) nor our techs have cleaning duties of any kind. We have "service associates" who clean rooms, including the breakroom. If there is no service associate on duty (at nights for our floor), there is one that comes from somewhere else to clean the room. If it doesn't get cleaned, then there won't be an admission to that room. The nurses aren't expected to clean the room, we've got too many other things to do. I must say that even though our unit looks clean outwardly, if you open any drawer or cabinet, it's pretty much a mess. I opened a cabinet in our conference room the other day and found a moldy strawberry shortcake! Yuck! I'm not suggesting the nurse take up the task of cleaning out the cabinets, though!