Should RNs do housekeeping job or is it our job?

Destinystar · Jul 7, 2004

your question cannot be answered correctly by peoples opinions. what does your hospital policy say about housekeeping?? what is the job descripiton for house keepers? is housekeeping in your job description or in the nursing policy hand book. that will give you the correct answer. based on your hospital policy you should be able to decide what your responsibilities are in those situations. do you have a union???? unions are very effective avenues for overiding hospital policies that have nurses performing non nursing jobs. from a nursing practice act point of view the nurses are accountable for providing a safe comfortable environment for the patients. if it were me personally i would clean up the poor patient, then wipe up the vomit with a mop to prevent microbes from becoming air borne and to make the patient and their roomate more comfortable.

:angryfire wanted to ask if anyone experienced similar situation and how the issue was handled. 1st of all let me mention that i work for a huge hospital that is considered to be one of the top hospitals in the nation, but it seems like there are some holes in the system that no one seem to notice. the issue i have is with the hospital’s housekeeping. it appears to me that they make up their own policies. last weekend i had a really sick patient who had vomited approximately 2.5-3 liters of green bile emesis all over floor and his bed. i had never seen anything like that! he was the 1st patient i saw coming on my shift. i helped pt get washed and called housekeeping. well when housekeeping came they refused to clean the room. making it very clear that they don’t clean up messes like that-it’s nurses job to clean. what they can do is wipe the floor when it’s clean, so it will be disinfected. i spend at least an hour on my knees and used up almost half of our supply of pink pads and towels to dry everything up. it was only after pt had 2 more of episodes of projectile vomiting each approximately 1-2 liters of emesis that the md gave me an ok to put in ngt. my point is having 8 very sick patients that night and spending all shift cleaning up messes and with no help from anyone else, should it be our job to clean up? i am not talking a little mess here-that takes few seconds to clean up, but a time consuming accidents. i had a similar episode maybe a year ago, when a pt had diarrhea and missed the toilet. the diarrhea explosion was all over the floor and bathtub. i was 9 mo pregnant at that time and was told i have to clean it up myself. i brought that up with management last time and was told its not housekeeping job, but ours. also we don’t have any cleaning supply on the floor and must use pt’s bed linen like pink pads and towels to clean up. anyone had similar situations? i don’t think it’s fair that other pts have to miss out on hours of care and get their meds hours late because their nurse is cleaning someone’s room. any input is welcome! thank you.:imbar

RN4NICU, LPN, LVN · Jul 7, 2004

your question cannot be answered correctly by peoples opinions. what does your hospital policy say about housekeeping?? what is the job descripiton for house keepers? is housekeeping in your job description or in the nursing policy hand book. that will give you the correct answer. based on your hospital policy you should be able to decide what your responsibilities are in those situations. do you have a union???? unions are very effective avenues for overiding hospital policies that have nurses performing non nursing jobs. from a nursing practice act point of view the nurses are accountable for providing a safe comfortable environment for the patients. if it were me personally i would clean up the poor patient, then wipe up the vomit with a mop to prevent microbes from becoming air borne and to make the patient and their roomate more comfortable.

the poster was asking for people's opinions!

your patients have roommates??!!

fergus51 · Jul 7, 2004

sorry fergie, but often times i feel i have been left without them, even when they were present.

That was actually exactly what I meant. When you go from a hospital with good support staff to one with a terrible department like I did, you really feel the pain and realize how important it is to have GOOD staff:) That's why I said the term housecreeping would be flattery:)LOL!