Another night from he*l and to top it off a lazy patient that was upset that he had to wait went into the bathroom and smeared feces EVERYWHERE, so I contact housekeeping that by the way had been sitting in their lounge watching tv while I am running my a$$ off, informs me that "I do not have to clean up body fluids, and body fluids are blood, vomit, feces, sputum and urine", excuse me, where is the form that I sign saying what I will or will not do. So on top of the meds, procedures, assessments, triages, reams of paperwork, telephone triage calls, and dealing with patients and their families I am now suppose to mop floors and wipe surfaces? I guess while I am taking the IV tray from room to room I will drag the mop and bucket with me and perform double duty. Why do people expect to keep a job but not work? I just do not get it, I worked at other facilities where the housekeepers took pride in their work and it showed. Instead the facility I am at now bows to them and lets the hospital fall down around us, floors with mud, blood and scuff marks, dust balls as big as tumbleweeds blowing out from under the nurses' station, no paper towels, no soap, grrrrrrrrrr!!! I am so tired of people adding to my misery. Anyone else that can commiserate?
Good greifffffffffff...that's wayyy uncalled for..I'd find it hard not to slap the "poop" out of housekeeping for saying that to me..definetly time for an incident report..notify his/her supervisor and the administrator...I'm not a tattle-tale type..but that's too far over the top to ignore.
Housekeeping in every facility I have been in for the last 5 years has "gone South". I agree with Joe, if we do not speak up and say, "no way is this my job while people hired for these jobs sit on their toush" then we will be expected and even demanded to do these jobs.
Nurse who do not clean up after themselves are slobs by any name. I have worked with so many that I have lost count. I always wiped the table off before and after eating, never ate at the desk, and picked up trash in the break room until one night a pot luck dinner given by the staff for all of the workers was allowed to sit out all night and ruin. I never participated in dinners again nor was available to clean the break room other than after myself. You may ask why I did not put the food away, several people had not eaten and they assured several of us they would put the food up as soon as they ate. The next day when we reported for work and saw the mess we jumped right in cleaned up the mess, threw everything out, and NEVER brought another dish for a dinner. Some of the people who had brought food had spent several hours making home-made food, meats in sauces and such. NEVER again. The HN never questioned such a waste of food. She only wanted to know if we had drank soda from the floor stock! NO!!!! Several liter bottles where left sitting on the table with the lids off, or ARE YOU BLIND?
Sorry to rant, but if we accept behaviors that are really unacceptable, then we get what we ask for.
This was a long time ago, but, once I was called down to the kitchen to clean off a tray that had vomit on it. Dietary doesn't do body fluids either! There I was standing with the dishwashing people spraying off the plate. I turned to the person next to me and asked why she could not have easily done that, rather than having me pulled away from my patients. She said "that's what you get paid the big bucks to do."
Dietary doesn't do body fluids either! There I was standing with the dishwashing people spraying off the plate.
It's an infection control issue. They're supposed to send it out in a bag to be cleaned elsewhere. I can't believe they had you come IN there to clean it there. Crossing "The Line" used to be grounds for a write-up if any nursing staff walked across the line in the kitchen.
Don't blame housekeeping, blame the spineless nursing leadership who made the deal with housekeeping that they did not have to perform these duties. I'm betting that when the head of enviromental services approached nursing administration about shifting some of their duties due to poor staffing, safety concerns or whatever excuse they wanted to use, then nursing administration said "okey-doke not a prob, 'our' nurses will be glad to do it". When I first returned to hospital nursing after doing home health for a few years, I was told that housekeeping didn't even strip the beds anymore when patients are discharged because there were a couple of occasions of them finding needles in the bed so the nurses had to do it. I ran away from that job as fast as I could. Don't I have enough to do?
Also forgive me, but you stated that in the past that you "have taken a broom and swept behind the station, mopped my share of blood, vomit, feces". May I suggest that that is also a problem? Why should you have ever done any of those things? That is probably where nursing leadership got the idea that they could foist those duties on us (excluding myself).
Nursing has to clean up the bodily fluids and poop in our hospital too. Then we call housekeeping to do the sanitizing. But only after most of it is cleaned up by us.
the housekeeper came down told me "you interrupted my break and you better mop the blood off of the f&*king floor before I clean" and then would not let me use her mop! "you are not using my mop, you can just get on your hands and knees and use a towel"
Excuse me?
Excuse me , my A** !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Methinks shewould have been riding that mop home that night, stuck so far up up her orifice she'd have needed a wench to pull it out ! "Ride THIS, witch, 'cuz you ain't using MY broom !!!"
So much for "gentle jnette".... I'd have been on her like stink on doo-doo.
Forget those job descriptions they make us look at and sign off and on. . . This is the definition of Nursing (personal opinion):
A nurse's duty is . . . Anything and everything that everybody else and every other department either can not or will not do.
I've taken wet towels to the floor after nearly losing shoes from the stickiness that I've complained about to housekeeping. I know they work hard at many places; however, I've found some work harder at avoiding being found than anything else. When my husband was a tech in nursing school he was often sent on wild goose chases to find equipment and supplies in the middle of the night which he often did successfully. A sidelight was he found many of the housekeeping hideouts. If it had a TV and place to sit that wasn't easily seen from the doorway, that was a guarateed hangout for the housekeeping staff.
Where I work the bathrooms are yuky. I have seen housekeeping use our bathrooms without cleaning it LOL. No soap, no TP, paper on the floor and floating BM because the toilets do not work properly but I guess thats maintenance job but you get the picture LOL.
"I do not have to clean up body fluids, and body fluids are blood, vomit, feces, sputum and urine"
Does this staff member not realize that they work in a hospital? If you can't handle blood, vomit, feces, sputum and urine- then why even apply? Somehow, somewhere, we ALL have to deal with it and clean it. Would that person step over a used Kleenex that somebody dropped? Have they never looked down at there shoes and wondered "How did THAT get there?"
I say- tell them to stop watching scrubs on TV, get off their lazy butt and help make their hospital a clean, safe place where people want to come when they're sick. They should do it as if their job security depends on it.
MandyInMS
652 Posts
Good greifffffffffff...that's wayyy uncalled for..I'd find it hard not to slap the "poop" out of housekeeping for saying that to me..definetly time for an incident report..notify his/her supervisor and the administrator...I'm not a tattle-tale type..but that's too far over the top to ignore.