Skip to main content

FINALLY: Hospital housekeepers beginning to get the respect they deserve in superbug fight

A great story today in the Brantford Expositor on the important role played by housekeeping in hospitals. Finally, the media is beginning to recognize the role housekeeping staff play in fighting superbugs and hospital acquired infections.  


In the past, hospital housekeeping services were cutback, privatized and treated as "hotel" or "auxillary" services with predictable consequences for the level of care.  Here's some excerpts from the story:

The job isn't just housekeeping. These days it is much more technical. Today, they collaborate closely with the infection prevention and control department.


"Our environmental service aides are skilled professionals whose contributions are critical to the success of preventing the transmission of infectious diseases not only among patients, but also our staff, physicians and volunteers," Sandra Comand, manager-infection preventionand control said. "They are a highly educated staff who are continually upgrading their skills."


And these days they are about to undertake even more training. "We are introducing a new cleaning process at the Brant Community Healthcare System," said Comand, adding: "This means our environmental service aides are going back to school."....


"The findings of the provincial infectious diseases advisory committee are quite clear: it is not just about cleanliness but also the prevention of the transmission of germs," says Comand."Obviously in patient care areas, we must disinfect to kill spores, such as C. difficile, VRE, MRSA and the other superbugs that have sometimes invaded health-care environments, including long-term care homes and hospitals...."


Each and every time a patient is discharged from the hospital, ESAs, as environmental service aides are called, must prepare the room for the next patient. They disinfect all the surfaces -beds, washroom, tables, doorknobs, the call bell, all the high-touch areas that health-care providers or patients will come in contact with. This process requires anywhere from 20 minutes up to an hour depending on the amount of equipment in the room. Health-care providers use special wipes to clean equipment such as stethoscopes and blood pressure in between patients.
Labels:

Comments

  1. PattiJune 21, 2011 at 12:12 PM

    This is inspiring!

    It's great to see the intense value of the work done by support services teams in Ontario Hospitals finally getting some recognition.

    The work of non-clinical staff is an integral piece of the healthcare system.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More spending on new hospitals and new beds? Nope

Hospital funding:  There is something off about the provincial government's Budget claims on hospital capital funding (funding to build and renovate hospital beds and facilities).    For what it is worth (which is not that much, given the long time frame the government cites), the province claims it will increase hospital capital spending over the next 10 years from $11 billion to $20 billion – or on average to about $2 billion per year.   But, this is just a notional increase from the previous announcement of future hospital capital spending.  Moreover, even if we did take this as a serious promise and not just a wisp of smoke, the government's own reports shows they have actually funded hospital infrastructure about $3 billion a year over the 2011/12-2015/16 period. So this “increase” is really a decrease from past actual spending. Even last year's (2016-17) hospital capital funding increase was reported in this Budget at $2.3 billion - i.e. about ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ford government fails to respond to 72% increase in COVID inpatient days, deepening the capacity crisis

COVID infections continue to drive up hospital costs and inpatient hospitalizations in Ontario. For the most recent fiscal year (April 1, 2022- March 31, 2023) hospital stays related to COVID cost $1.221 billion, according to new CIHI data.   This is about 4% of total hospital spending, creating a very significant new cost pressure beyond the usual pressures of population growth, aging, inflation, and rising utilization.   Costs for COVID related hospitalizations increased 22.2% in Ontario in 2022/23 from the previous fiscal year, rising from $999 million to $1.221 billion.  That rise is particularly notable as the OMICRON spike of late 2021 and early 2022 had passed by the the 2022/23 fiscal year.   The $222 million increase in COVID hospitalization costs came in the same year as the Ford government cut special COVID funding and, in fact, cut total hospital funding by $156 million.     In total, there were 60,653 COVID hospitalizations...
Post a Comment
Read more

The hospital crisis: No capacity, no plan, no end

While Canada has achieved universal public healthcare coverage, that does not mean conservative forces have given up trying to erode that coverage and expand corporate care where it does not currently exist. The battle has become particularly intense in Ontario under the Ford Progressive Conservative government, which is implementing serious cuts to the level of care and moving to bring in for-profit mini-hospitals. Inadequate Staffing.   Less and less of hospital spending is on staff.   Employee compensation as a share of hospital expenditures has consistently shrunk in Ontario. This is not some immutable law of hospital development.  It is in stark contrast with the rest of Canada, where compensation has become a larger share and now accounts for 67.1%. Hospitals in provinces other than Ontario now have 18 percent more staff per capita than hospitals in Ontario. Overall, if Ontario had the same staffing capacity as the other provinces and territories, there would be another...
Post a Comment
Read more