Is your hospital DIRTY ??? Does housekeeping clean the empty room and bath in

mandrews · Jul 30, 2005

I am lucky to have very good cna's on the night shift. One aid pulled me to the side and said she was told the man upstairs was working on the budget and they had been told to use washrags sparingly. She showed me a stack of about 12 rags and said thats all I have for tonight.

:uhoh21:

melissa

hollyster · Jul 30, 2005

The hsp I worked at is filthy. The isolation rooms in the

CCU were not terminally cleaned even after infectious pt.s had been in there. In the three years that I was in CCU, I never once saw the curtains cleaned(yes,fabric curtains in isolation rooms.) The supply bins were not emptied and cleaned out between pt.s. So the same materials that were in the room with TB,MRSA,VRE etc were used on the next pt.

The hsp also had the meetings that the first poster wrote of, they were called town hall meetings. We were supposed to be able to speak out about our concerns without repercussions. When I brought the infection control issues up my nurse manager was called to meet with the CEO and told she needed to get control of her staff and they better not mention these things again especially with JACHO inspectors coming. Luckily for me my NM had a back bone and told the CEO that she would not punish or tell her staff not to speak the truth. She stood up for me and the other CCU nurse that asked a question. So much for their open no reprecussion meetings.

passing thru · Aug 16, 2005

That WAS A RARE MANAGER !!! and a real gem !!

I AM going to write to the newspaper................... Their policy is that you must include name address for letters. I am going to write a letter defending nurses. I hope they omit my name.............. I will request that they do.

Otherwise there would be repercussions. I will send it by Monday and tell you all what - - if anything - - happens.

DusktilDawn · Aug 16, 2005

That WAS A RARE MANAGER !!! and a real gem !!
I AM going to write to the newspaper................... Their policy is that you must include name address for letters. I am going to write a letter defending nurses. I hope they omit my name.............. I will request that they do.
Otherwise there would be repercussions. I will send it by Monday and tell you all what - - if anything - - happens.

Good luck, I applaud you for advocating for your patients in regards to reducing infection

Very sad that after the emphasis on patient advocacy nurses are taught in school that we have to fear repercussions for being patient advocates. Defeats the purose of patient advocacy. Where are the laws to protect us in these circumstances. We can be held accountable by state BONs and the legal system for not advocating for our patients, yet our facilities can punish/fire us for advocating.

Just a comment about the facility I work at. Little hard to wash hands when soap & paper towel dispensers are frequently empty, excellent utilization of nurses time replacing paper towels & soap. IV poles that are supposed to be cleaned are shoved aside into the extremely filthy soiled utility room, yep, left for the nurse to clean/disinfect if she wants to use them. Sharps containers overfilled, yes nurse has time to replace those too. IV pumps that are recleaned by staff that doesn't want to wait 4 or more hours for central supply to deliver a new one for that patient admitted with DVT on heparin gtt.

I could go on. I just find it very frustrating that the only people expected to do their jobs and police everyone else to do theirs are NURSES.

BKRN · Aug 16, 2005

The hospital I work at is filthy as well! Our Housekeeping staff only gets 10-15 minutes per room. I told my husband that if I am ever sick he had better not take me there! Excellent Nursing staff, but the risk of getting an infection-no thanks!

student4ever · Aug 16, 2005

10 minutes ???
There was a big article in last Sundays' Houston Chronicle about the nationwide problem with nosocomial infections in hospitals............ (the infections you get when you went into the hospital for something else ! ) And 100,000 people - Americans - die from annually.
Our unit has LOTS OF VRE, MRSA, etc., etc.,
Lots of surgical wounds with infections....
Naturally, .....in the article, the nurses were responsible. !
Naturally, the article said MORE handwashing by the nurses would diminish or cure the problem.
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!
I frequently observe and time the house keeping dept. folks when they enter a discharged patients' room to clean it .... it takes them 10 minutes !!
I'm not blaming them ......
MANAGEMENT has cut housekeepings' budget, their staff, their time to clean a room - - bed -floor -bathroom - - to ten minutes.... !!!!!!!!!!!!!
(20 years ago it was 30 minutes for each room.)
Listen to this, ....................
last April, the CEO of my hospital held his annual meetings with the staff. these are held in small groups of about 30 employees, until all employees have had their chance to attend the meetings.
Well, the PURPOSE of these annual meetings is so us staff peons can tell the big shots what's bugging us !!
(no management folks attend.)
We are encouraged '"" TO UNLOAD - SPEAK UP - TELL THE BIG BOSS WHAT'S BUGGING US"", AND HE GUARANTEEES no recriminations.... (what's said in the meeting stays there.)
Well, REPEATEDLY, the # 1 big problem the employees complained about ??
""The hospital is DIRTY . ""
That was the very words used and examples given by many many employees.
The CEO seemed shocked, seemed rather surprised to hear this as the foremost problem seen by employees.
Of course he promised to check into it and TAKE ACTION !
It is nearly August now, the hospital is still dirty...
It isn't obvious dirt................. if you walked onto my unit, you would not notice obvious dirt.............................
The place simply isn't cleaned as it should be... although every day there's a guy pushing a noisy wax-buffer machine down the halls.
I'm thinking about sending this to the newspaper.
And, yeah, all those doorknobs, toilet seats, computer keyboards, medication carts, phones , desktops, pt. beds and bed rails, pillows, i.v. poles, feeding pump poles, med cart tops, etc., etc, and pt room floors - - (ever see the bottom of a wastebasket?)
my hospital is filthy and
if I'm admitted I'm taking my own sanitizors.
Too bad the article dumped the blame on us nurses...............
I've had red cracked hands for 20 years....
I need help from housekeeping and management, not MORE handwashing.
The "public " is watching US when they come into the hospitals,
hell, I'm the cleanest thing they will encounter during their stay !!

You must work at my hospital!!! I work in the ED, and it doesn't LOOK dirty, but I know it IS dirty. We stay so busy that housekeeping doesn't ever clean the rooms unless we page them for a MRSA/VRE/Meningitis/TB/Trauma cleanup, except maybe once in a while if we have a slow night they'll run in there and clean really quick between patients - if we have time to page them. We usually end up pulling all the trash/biohazard bags, and the only thing they actually end up doing all the time is changing the sharps bins. It's pitiful. They don't have time to actually STAY in the ED to watch and clean a room down in between patients, but they strip and wax all the floors (causing total disruption and smelly fumes that make asthmatic patients need breathing treatments when they only came in for sutures) every single month! And I've heard them say that they're only allotted 20-30 minutes to clean the ORs... now that in my opinion is downright awful. It's no wonder we have so many patients in this area with MRSA/VRE. Not to mention that I have never ONCE seen a housekeeper empty/change her mop water after mopping up a bloody trauma room floor. Or that they don't check to see if the cords to the monitors/bp cuffs/etc. have gotten blood on them during the course of the trauma (which they usually do). Every time one of my patients is discharged and I go in to change the sheets and such, I have to clean up the trash, rinse out the sink, pull the trash, etc. etc. etc. All while trying to keep up with vitals and blood draws and catheters and EKGs on about 10 patients. The reason housekeeping doesn't do any of this for us??? THERE IS ONLY ONE HOUSEKEEPER FOR THE ENTIRE HOSPITAL AT NIGHT. How wrong is that? Okay, sorry guys, rant over now!

Antikigirl, ASN, RN · Aug 16, 2005

So I went to a nursing meeting today...and one of the nurses said that they found a 3 inch round mushroom behind a tub in one of our assisted living bather rooms! EKKKKK!!!!

She brought this up with housekeeping...their responce??? Sorry we have been short staffed!!!!!!! Heck...wouldn't that be a nice excuse for nursing....won't cut it!!!!!!!!!

The mushroom was removed and the whole place bleached out! But GROSS!!!!!!!!

Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN · Aug 16, 2005

I want to take time to point out that

1) When cuts are made, housekeeping is typically the first to go.

2) Don't yell at the housekeeper that's trying to be in 5 places at once. Take it to their supervisor, the administration, etc.

passing thru · Dec 3, 2005

Anyone continuing to hear of hospital acquired infections in their patients?

Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN · Dec 3, 2005

No, i'm not.

lunakat · Dec 3, 2005

How funny this post has be resurrected. Just last night I went to work in the ED dept and they are repainting the entire thing. They have an outside company cleaning in there to wipe everything down (from behind the pyxsis to the fan at he unit secretary's desk. Of course they are doing this in sections so it's a big mess, we have been moved to the back where the overflow rooms are. In fact the previous night they had a code and, mostly painted room be darned, worked on him on there anyway. It's suppose to be like this all weekend, they are even stripping the floors of old wax and redoing them. Also throughout the rest of the hospital they are pulling up the carpet and putting down the fake wood floors. I asked around it there was a JCAHO inspection coming but no one seems to know. One guy said they last couple of hospitals where he worked and this occurred was because it was being sold. It will be interesting to see what happens in the next week or two....:chair:

SheriLynnRN · Dec 4, 2005

The facility I currently work at is the cleanest hospital I've seen so far. I think that main reason for this is that each unit has a housekeeper that is full time on that unit and is responsible for it 40 hours a week. Floating housekeepers fill in on off shifts and every other weekend. Our housekeeper gets to know the patients and even helps out with little things like passing out newspapers, and she always lets us know right away if a patient needs something. The last hospital I worked at, forget it. That was gross! The entire place was carpeted. Yuck!