Hospital chaos, part 2
February 22, 2008 | 08:00 AM
Darlene Hull
Now, not only do we have a serious shortage of staff, we have some other weird things happening in the hope of saving money.
Laundry – which used to be done in house – is now being shipped to Edmonton. The turnaround time for completion is so short that really high-powered cleaners are being used, but care is not taken to rinse the laundry properly. Laundry returns to the hospital so full of soap and chemicals that patients are experiencing allergic reactions. Because of this – and to save more money – patients are being asked to supply their own linens. These arrive in hockey-type bags and the bags need to be stored in the open because they don’t fit in the tiny lockers.
This means that they have to be moved regularly for cleaning. However, housekeeping staff isn’t allowed to touch patient belongings, so these need to be moved by the nursing staff which is already overworked.
Moving the heaving bags is causing more injury – so more overtime and stress – to the nursing staff. To avoid this, these bags are being moved as little as possible. However they are taking up so much space that the rooms can’t be cleaned properly, which means there’s dust and dirt in places where it shouldn’t be.
Sounds like someone needs to go back to the drawing board and re-evaluate the big picture before more money gets thrown at this, but heaven forbid we need to spend several million putting together some committee to spend months researching to state the obvious. Let’s get in a great business mind to solve this as a large business would! Any offers?
