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

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

Originally posted by LPN2Be2004

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.

It's our "season" in Florida. People wait 12 to 24 hours or more in the ER awaiting a room. Had one poor isolation patient wait over 36 hours for a private room to open up.

Don't know how waiting for a room to be properly sanitized and cleaned is going to make someone sue, but people sue for anything I guess.

I still say no. Not going to clean rooms. They can wait. :)

[nurseygrrl, LPN]

Absolutely not! We nurses have to start putting our foot down. It seems that any job that needs to get done falls on the nurse if everyone else is too busy or other departments are understaffed. I have had it with doing everyone else's job. Yes, I have definitely done things outside of my job description for the sake of a pt. but you have to draw the line somewhere and shower cleaning is a definite no. I worked in a doctors office and quit because they had me taking out garbage and organizing magazines. It's not beneath me by any means, but it's not my job. I became a nurse to take care of people. The public needs to learn we are professionals. Look at it this way, why did I have to take out the garbage and not the doc or the PA, or even the secretary? Why does the nurse have to clean the shower, and not a doc, or administrator? A doc would look at you like you had 5 heads if you asked him/her to clean a shower. Nurses have to start offering that same look!

[SmilingBluEyes]

Boy do I hate when nurses roll over and say "cleaning is not beneath them"

HELLO!

It's not about RN's being too good to do such things....you are missing the point.

You see, when nurses say they have no problem assuming HOUSEKEEPING duties, it opens us up to take on all manner of OTHER NON-nursing tasks like Lab/phlebo, RT, you name it.

STOP THIS!

PROTEST!

We nurses work short-staffed enough w/o having to be housekeepers, too. Yes, I have cleaned up poop or blood spills on the floor w/a mop so patients did not slip or have to put up w/them til housekeeping could come. I strip rooms when pts are discharged for housekeeping.

BEYOND THAT I DRAW THE LINE.

MY PATIENTS NEED AN RN-----not an: RN/housekeeper/phlebo/whatevertheydecidetoscrewuswithnext...

Our patients are having to wait long enough for their lights to be answered w/o US doing everyone else's jobs, too.

You who allow this, contribute to the problem and the perception that administration can cut corners and costs by doing this to us.

Glad I work where I do. IF they did this to us, I would be movin' on.

[Gldngrl]

I'd like to know under what theory or cause of action a patient is going to base their lawsuit on...unless they are critically ill and need a unit bed, they can wait for the bed to be cleaned and if they are critically ill, they would probably rather have a nice cleaned bed by the housekeeper who used virucidal/bactericidal/fungicidal chemicals to reduce the incidence of secondary infections. I've never heard of a lawsuit about a delayed bed wait, but I have heard of lawsuits/settlements regarding MRSA/VRE hosp acquired infections.

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

You had to have seen the pt. lol.

First off he didn't touch anything while he was there without wearing rubber gloves. He went out in the halls with an isolation mask on.

He wasn't on isolation. He was just paranoid he would catch anything from everyone else. So needless to say being parked in the ER for 4 hours, and then parked in the hall for another 5-10 minutes (ER sent him up because he was being the backend of a horse to the nursing staff down there) while the bed was cleaned and made, didn't sit well with him.

It was way easier for me to just clean the bed and make the bed than to page for housekeeping, wait another 5 for them to call up and see what was needed, then be told it'd take 10 minutes to get up there. The sooner that bed was cleaned and made, the sooner the assessment was over, the sooner his door could be closed.

(It didn't help that this pt. was also the marketing director for our facility either.)

I definately do not make a habit of it, nor will i in the future, nurse or not. We have an excellent night shift housekeeper, the only problem is she's the only one in the whole building at night. To me is common sense: am i gonna page her and wait 40 minutes just so the bed can be wiped off and made, or take the 2 minutes to do it myself on very rare occaisions.

(Who knows, maybe it's where i worked as a housekeeper that doing that really doesn't bother me in the least.)

[SmilingBluEyes]

duplicate (bad night)

[SmilingBluEyes]

Originally posted by SmilingBluEyes

staightening a room for 5 minutes is a far cry from scouring showers.

there is common sense and then there is out and out allowing ourselves to be abused---ya know what I mean?

the difference is, some people do not, or are afraid to, draw a line in the dirt (bad pun, I admit), when mgt gets unreasonable and tells nurses do more and more until doing our main job becomes nearly impossible...and all the while complaining about all the OT logged by these nurses. Hmmph. Something has to give, and it's too often the NURSE.

we have to stand up for ourselves. scouring a shower ain't in my very lengthy job description as an RN. I have too much to do just keeping up as an Rn. It is NOT about being "above" housekeeping duties; it's about abusing an overworked group. You don't seen them laying this additional duty on LAB, pharmacy, xray, or RT do ya??? Get my point?

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

What i meant by cleaning the showers, i meant spraying with disinfectant and wiping with a towel after each pt.

[SmilingBluEyes]

Even so, I don't have the time. You won't either as a nurse.

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

I'll have to on that floor. It'll be part of my job on that floor to clean up after myself.

[Headhurt, ADN]

I remember in my tender years, just starting out as a CNA in a nursing home. I worked nights...and it had been a particularly bad night (one of our favorite residents had passed away). The day RN came in (she was one of those who still wore her little hat). She had just did a quick walk-through the residents' rooms and marched up to the desk. She told me that I had to go back to such and such room and flush the toilet. This particular resident was ambulatory, and just forgot to flush her toilet after going to the bathroom.

In front of God and everyone, night shift and day shift, I let her have it with both canons. She had just been in that room, yet it was "beneath her" to flush the toilet??

I finished by asking her if she bothered to flush her own toilets at home, or if she made someone else do it.

I wasn't written up for it, even though she threatened to for "insubordination". Fortunately, I had one of those DON's that worked her way up from housekeeping to her then position.

This thread just made me think of that story, that happened 10 years ago. :)

Except for Toilet Nurse, I haven't encountered a nurse who felt they were "too good" to do housekeeping tasks. My hospital's staff matrix is influenced more by budget than acuity...and its not uncommon to drown in our own work...much less try to add other things to our jobs. We may wipe down a table or bed in a pinch, but we don't do an all out effort to make our unit sparkle. If it takes away from the patient, then it is not an option...unless there is a safety issue involved.

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

Originally posted by Headhurt

If it takes away from the patient, then it is not an option...unless there is a safety issue involved.

Exactly.

(Toilet Nurse, LOL!! Too funny!)