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?
OMG! I could've written this (almost) word-for-word! My "feces on the walls" moment had me sooooooo upset that I swore I would be a Walmart Greeter the next day!!! Same as you- when I called Housekeeping, I was told *I* had to clean it up..........okaaaaaaay..........and my FOURTEEN other patients who need all kinds of pain meds and IV fluids will just have to WAIT!
(oh yea, and we had ONE aide that night for a busy 40-bed Ortho unit...........Good Times!) :stone
MOST of our housekeeping staff really do work hard. We treat them as equals. We had a party for one when he graduated college. They see how hard we work, and that we don't call them for little stuff. We even know their names! We try to act as a team. Sounds corny, but it works!:)
as long as nurses "come with the room" we will continue to be treated as errand running scullymaids. oh for an effective union......
So very true. Why is it it always is our job expectation to pick up slack for other depts? We DO have our own work to do
As far as rude uncooperative ancillary staff, I am fighting this battle now...I complained but now the finger is pointed at ME...I must have done or said something wrong for this person to have behaved in such a way...kinda like when docs are ugly. The nurse obviously provoked him.
as long as nurses "come with the room" we will continue to be treated as errand running scullymaids. oh for an effective union......
Hate to disillusion you BUT.....as a nurse, I am unionized - so is housekeeping. Guess who is obliged to clean up blood, vomit, feces etc.......Yep, the nurse. Only after nursing has cleaned up the various body fluids, excreta etc can we ask housekeeping to "disinfect" the area.
And yes the union is HIGHLY effective- don't dare try to break that rule LOL.
A couple of months ago I had a pt die about 2400. So I called housekeeping to clean the room for a new admission (It was the only empty bed on our floor and emerg was packed). After paging the housekeeper, they called back and told me that there wasn't enough staff on nights so they now only had to clean the L&D rooms after 2300 everything else could wait could wait for days. Well, emerg wasn't going to accept that as a reason for me not taking an admission so between caring for the pt before they died, caring for the family after, the paperwork, preparing the body for the mourge, taking report on the new admission, stabilizing the new admission when they got to the floor and the paperwork--I got to clean the room too!!!!!!
BTW, when I paged housekeeping again at abought 0300 because another pt threw up blood all over the floor (HIV+ and HepC+), this was after I'd already cleaned up the vomit but I wanted them to mop the floor too (the mops on our floor are locked in the housekeeping closet--of all the things I'd steal!!!). The housekeeped ignored my page. I only got ahold of them because I called L&D and asked the nurse there to send the housekeeper up when they saw them. When the housekeeper got to the floor before I could even tell them what I'd called them for she started to lecture me about how busy she was!!!!
i feel your pain!
i have actually come from the er to the floor to clean a room because housekeeping on night shift was "to busy"or "there was only one of them" and yadayadayada!
i think that is pretty sad. to bad that the press ganey scores don't affect getting house keepers that will do thier jobs as hard as we will. oh well, i am armed with my syringes, bandage scissors and mop with dust rag and i am ready to go.:chuckle
In the smaller, more rural hospitals here, nurses clean the beds on night shift if one needs cleaned. Yes, and they apply clean sheets too. Oh, don't forget the bedside table and night stand.
They have to mop it too. Been there and done it. Evan at local VA
I don't understand ANY of you who say it is "part of your job to clean up feces and vomit" or that "since noone else did it, I did it, since I'm appararantly expected"
Geesh. Do all us other nurses a favor and STOP doing this. This is NOT your job, it certainly isn't mine, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't lead others to believe that it IS a nurse's job. When you do this stuff, you just make it appear to the patients, management, and all in and outside the hospital culture that nurses are responsable for EVERYTHING. Your employer is responsable for providing the people to do this work. Call the nursing supervisor and ask for assistance from housekeeping, leave it for days in absence of its provision, and NEVER be a martyr before I have to come in and relieve you and live up to the ridiculous standard set by your cleaning like a maid on top of everything else we do.
((((((huggietoes)))))) :kiss I can feel your sorrow about the conditions nurses are forced to work under in some facilities. Don't blame you for thinking of working at Walmart......have thought about it myself.
I can hear me now.......Hello, Welcome to Walmart! May I get a cart for you!
And when they leave the store I'd say....Have a great day (evening) (night)! Drive safe!
Also thinking of working at Barnes & Nobles Bookstore. I love that store, and I love to be surrounded by fresh smelling books. I think I should have been a librarian or bookstore owner instead of a nurse since I missed my calling to attend medical school.
Woe are we who must consider such obstacles in life to be peacfully employed! :chuckle
You best bet is Barnes and Noble. I have done Walmart and I will never work for them again!!!!
I don't understand ANY of you who say it is "part of your job to clean up feces and vomit" or that "since noone else did it, I did it, since I'm appararantly expected"
Geesh. Do all us other nurses a favor and STOP doing this. This is NOT your job, it certainly isn't mine, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't lead others to believe that it IS a nurse's job. When you do this stuff, you just make it appear to the patients, management, and all in and outside the hospital culture that nurses are responsable for EVERYTHING. Your employer is responsable for providing the people to do this work. Call the nursing supervisor and ask for assistance from housekeeping, leave it for days in absence of its provision, and NEVER be a martyr before I have to come in and relieve you and live up to the ridiculous standard set by your cleaning like a maid on top of everything else we do.
At the rural county hospital where I work we have no housekeeping after midnight on weekends and 230a on weekdays so IT IS OUR JOB to clean delivery rooms and section suite if we want to have a clean area for our next delivery. Leaving it is not an option. I have also emptied trash in my patients rooms to keep the sanitary pads from overflowing into the floor. I can not call housekeeping if the hospital does not employee them.
I know exactly what you mean......in a nursing home I worked in, we had no pill crushers.......maintence was to buy us some "pliers", mind you to cruch pills with.....they were too cheap to buy regular pill crushers..(that nursing home is owned by a doctor and he has 120 of them and wants each one to make $5million in profit!).they bought some, and they had the groves on them which were tearing into the paper cups.......so due to rules and regs they had to be ground down by maintence, so they were smooth and wouldn't get pill contents on the pliers. So, I drop them off to them, 3 of them are playing a dart game and their dinner is cooking on a outdoor grill inside the building!!!!!!!! Fire hazard I'd say. so I go back in an hour to pick them up..one side of the plier was smooth and one wasn't.......the guy was gone.....so I thought ....I've got to pass my meds, I can't wait for these jokers, I turn the machine on to grind them down, which I have never done before.....and in walks the maintence superivisor. I told him the scenrio and he ground them down. Now, these had been dropped off to them a week ago. Why should nurses have to do these things. Then, one night I'm at the desk charting and the maintence guy come over and says.....tell your CNA to clean up the urine on the floor in the TV room that some patient peed on, because I don't do any clean ups of bodily fluids!!!!!!!! In that same facility, maintence shuts the lights off at 7"40pm.....we pass meds til 9pm.....the only night lights that are on are near the clean and dirty linen closets, if you move the cart over there to see your med mar., evariably a CNA will have to get into it and yah have to move the cart and get out of her way , yah know what I mean.......I told the DON/ADON/Administrator........do you think they ever did anything about it ..........no. All three maintence guys were standing around my cart after I had complained about it.....at the exact time the lighs went off, and I was so busy, I didn't get a break til 8"45pm that night.....no break , no dinner.......and so when the lights went out, I said, how do you expect me to see.....the one said , buy a mining helmet with a light on it, and the other said, buy one of those reading lights and clamp it on your med book.....yah know I laughed alittle, but........I quit the next doy too........Guess, what folks........I wish I hadn't but......who really cares about the seriousness of our jobS????? No one but us I guess. And , I think this whole business and economy is about making more money for the "owners/shareholders" whoever they are and in order for them to make those huge profits, they have to work their employees to death almost......they know it......they want production out of us......they want one person to do the job of what 3 or 4 people used to do........It saves them overhead, don't you get it?????WE' the working class are getting our As......kicked big time......and we are damn slaves in this feudal system,......when are we going to learn.........Us nurses need to start buying up these nursing homes ourselves and maybe a few hospitals...why let the doctors have all the profit....lets hire them or a few PA's. or a NP......because that's the only way we can practice our profession the way it should be done and that's the only way the patients will get the care they need and should get and are paying for...........WE need to start a national organization a national union if yah will......Electricians have done.it with the IBEW....if people wanted the work done right, they hired a union man, and it had to be done by a union man in order for the state inspectors to approve it as done correct. Only the "scabs" done slip shod work and they worked for less too. If these places want union nurses, then they hire us at what we tell them we will work for, and we will TELL them how many staff we need to get the work done......if they want to hire "scabs", and I"ve already worked with alot of them, who don't follow the rules and regs only when state is there....and then that hospital or nursing home will get the reputation of hiring non union or non association whatever and all the patients will go to the facilities owned and employed by topnotch nurses and they will know its well staffed and they will know they will get the best care. All the nurses will be cooperative owners of these facilities........and will receive a bonus, but there will be no greed, no envy, they will work as a team to make sure every patient is cared for and feels safe before the lights go out at night. Nurses don't become DON's and ADON's if they haven't worked the unit...they don't get those positons by walking into it.....and once they walk into it they don't make rounds again on the unit and just sit in their offices, but they are interactive with the nurses and the patients and pitch in........The CNA's, tidy up the rooms every night......they won't throw the dirty poopy linen on the floors.......because in this nursing home......or hospital the linen cart will be moved into the room and it will be placed in the cart,not on the floor.........and yes housekeeping will clean up the messes, and they will empty the trash cans every night in the dirty linen room and they won't place the only large trash cans in the place next to the nurses station, for dressings to be tossed into, and food, and papers and whatever else........but they will go into a trash closet.......and nurses will have a larger med room than the supply room........and they will have room to hang their coats and a locker room on every unit........most hospitals have that for nurses, but nursing homes don't....and nurse aides will pass ice water every shift before meds are passed and every patient will be encouraged to drink water every day .....these are all things I have had to do as a nurse.........nothing is delegated anymore , they expect us to do it ALL...........well don't, your only assisting a millioinaire to make more millions.........and if yoiu work like that for very long , the workforce will be dead before they can retire and draw social security.........maybe they know that and are thinking that that is part of the plan for your generation.......poplulation and fiscal control folks that all it is.....and until we do something about it as a group of workers, nothing will change........because every "thread" , I've read on this site I can usually relate to....its happening all over this country......and believe me, IT NEVER USED TO BE THIS WAY !!!!!
I've watched it change drasticly over the past 20 yrs...........It's up to us to do something about it...I don't have the expertise to start a National organization of Nurses..., but maybe some one does......and just look at all the nurses we could sign up into something like that just from this website.........and by the way......we should own all the nursing agencies too....why should some rich man own it as an investment project.....nurses should hire nurses..........and we should also demand the state inspectors to be inspecting FOR criteria set by nurses who work there....If the facilities and hospitals really worried about patient care.....why do they not want the state inspectors talking to us about what we know, should, be changed and corrected in order for us to give good nursing care.........they just play games with the administration and then administration plays games with us, hide this , hide that, don't talk to them, keep your mouth shut.......I feel like a dang crook , its awfull........now days. I have to work to eat, I have to have cash flow, but they sure try to dupe us nurses in this system , the way it is now. I went into nursing because I was a honest , trustworthy, helping person, I always loved my work and was proud of it.......but somewhere along the line here....I feel I'm working for a dang casino or something.....patients are being taken and so are we nurses.....while the other guy has hit the jackpot!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i know! let's all pool our money, fly to vegas and open a casino! see there, we would have a professional wait staff, maitance men who really want to be there, security that is no less than fbi worthy and our guests would have to payus to be there!
just think, make money by taking care of people, feeding them, cleaning up after them..... not getting peed on, puked on, spit on, bled on, cussed at, assulted..... (and if any of the above did happen.... we could SEND THEM TO THE ER!!!!!!)
nervousnurse, ASN
291 Posts
OMG! I could've written this (almost) word-for-word! My "feces on the walls" moment had me sooooooo upset that I swore I would be a Walmart Greeter the next day!!! Same as you- when I called Housekeeping, I was told *I* had to clean it up..........okaaaaaaay..........and my FOURTEEN other patients who need all kinds of pain meds and IV fluids will just have to WAIT!
(oh yea, and we had ONE aide that night for a busy 40-bed Ortho unit...........Good Times!)
:stone