RNs Performing Housekeeping Duties!

[allsmiles]

do rns perform housekeeping duties where you work?

i got the shock of my life this week during clinicals. i escorted a female patient to the shower. after i helped the patient with the shower and returned her to her room, i proceeded to my next assigned patient.

my supervising co-nurse stopped me, and told me that i needed to clean the shower. she then walked me down the hall to the housekeeping closet and pointed out the correct bottle of disinfectant i needed to use. she then informed me of the written procedures for cleaning the shower [spray disinfectant on the walls, floors, etc. any surface that the patient may have come in contact with; wait a certain amount of time; then return and rinse the entire shower area down].

i am not a prima donna by any stretch of the imagination , but i naively thought that housekeeping did facility cleaning in the hospital.

well, i remained calm, and sprayed the shower down, but luckily by the time i returned to finish, housekeeping had already finished cleaning the shower.

so, my question to you is this:

are you required to do housekeeping tasks in your workplace?

was this just a power play by the co-nurse to humble the newbie?

am i just over-reacting?

all comments and opinions welcome! thanks! :kiss

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

Each of our pt. rooms have their own shower. Since they are only used once a day we rarely clean them, since housekeping cleans it once a day (we are to clean up any mess though, like BM).

The shower room down the hall (bigger room, better when two people are showering one pt.) is to be cleaned after each pt. I have no problem doing this, and i won't as a nurse either, because if i were the pt. i'd want a clean shower to be showered in.

If we'd have 6 shower pts. in an evening, what am i gonna do, page housekeeping and wait on them to come up and clean it while my other pts. wait? Nope, i'm quite capable of doing it myself. :) It's 3 minutes at the most.

And this is how the RNs do this on our floor too.

[pghfoxfan]

Cleaning is not beneath me either...my guess is that housekeeping can not be there after each patient is bathed, and to facilitate a speedy turn over so that the next patient doesn't have to wait, they are asking the nurses to do this.

A pet peeve of mine is when a patient is waiting for a bed and the nurse holds up the transfer because house keeping did not clean the bed. I would not make a patient wait for a bed, while waiting a long time for housekeeping...I'd do it myself. If there is a problem with the housekeeping department, then that needs to be re-addressed...if they are truely busy, then I help them out, for the patient sake.

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

And if the bed wasn't cleaned, i'd clean it, make it, etc. The slack of a job not done can be addressed later, right now the pt. is first.

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

Originally posted by pghfoxfan

[b

A pet peeve of mine is when a patient is waiting for a bed and the nurse holds up the transfer because house keeping did not clean the bed. I would not make a patient wait for a bed, while waiting a long time for housekeeping...I'd do it myself. If there is a problem with the housekeeping department, then that needs to be re-addressed...if they are truely busy, then I help them out, for the patient sake. [/b]

Sorry, but NO. I refuse to do housekeepings job and clean beds and rooms. That patient is going to have to wait. End of discussion. :)

As for the shower, if someone else might be using that shower perhaps I can understand the need to spray it down. But housekeeping needs to be one cleaning bathrooms and beds. It's not beneath me to clean up messes. I've probably cleaned up 1000's of messes on the floor, including blood, vomit, poop, sputum, etc.

[nursemaa]

I agree, Tweety! It's not beneath me to clean up messes either, but when nurses are doing housekeeping then that's time taken away from the patient. There are exceptions, of course, but cleaning should not routinely be part of the duties of nurses. Nurses should be doing the nursing, housekeeping should be doing the cleaning.

[bellehill, RN]

I agree tweety and nursemaa, I have cleaned rooms to facilitate patient transfers and all it did was take me away from my other patients. I have no problem cleaning if I have nothing else to do, but we have staff who gets paid to do this job. We don't ask housekeeping to walk our patients to the bathroom...

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

Last time we had a pt. wait for a bed while the nightime Lone Ranger housekeeper came over just to wipe the bed off and make the bed, we almost got sued for making the pt. wait.

I'll stick with cleaning and making the bed myself (and THEN contacting the housekeeping supervisor to correct the rare problem), just to avoid the *****ing from the pt and the family. I'm confident they can find more things to complain about later.

[Dave ARNP]

I think whoever did the cost figures for this needs to be smacked.

You're telling me that it's better to pay an RN 20+ bucks an hour to clean a shower, when a housekeeper will do it for 6?

That's nuts!

No wonder we have a nursing shortage. All of the nurses are in the bathroom learning about scrubbing bubbles!

Dave

[TracyB,RN, RN]

You have time to give more than 1 patient a shower?!?!?That is cool. I totally agree with cleaning the shower in between patients. I just wish I had the time to give ONE shower, let alone several.

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

Originally posted by bellehill

I agree tweety and nursemaa, I have cleaned rooms to facilitate patient transfers and all it did was take me away from my other patients. I have no problem cleaning if I have nothing else to do, but we have staff who gets paid to do this job. We don't ask housekeeping to walk our patients to the bathroom...

Wish we could. It never fails, 5 ppl have to pee at once.

[crankyasanoldma]

I suppose if the shower is shared, then it would be faster and more efficient for each user to clean it after they use it. My facility has mostly private rooms with private batrooms in each room. The main difference is that we are well staffed, so I generally don't have a problem taking care of all my patients needs.