Deja-Vu With A Vet Stored In The Hallway

It was Deja-Vu with the 7 West patient rooms yesterday when I went in to work: the dayshift guy responsible for cleaning them coming down to the supervisors' office laughing about how many rooms he had left undone as he checked out of work.

This time there was a twist. This time when I went up to my assigned area, which does not include 7 West, I saw a veteran sleeping on a gurney out in the hallway of 7 East, post surgery, waiting on a patient room.

Most of the time veterans are on an emergency room bed downstairs waiting for a housekeeper to clean a room. Sometimes their waits are long. This time we had one in the hallway waiting.

Currently no housekeeper is permanently assigned to clean rooms on 7 West on the second shift. Been that way for months. 8 West, too. Management can't get their shit together to hire someone....or they get a performance bonus for running understaffed. I don't know which. Maybe it's both.

So "temporary" solutions are used. Housekeepers are pulled from other assignments to prepare 7 West rooms for veterans. It's an add-on chore to their regular assignment, thus assuring that neither the regular assignment nor the add-on will be done thoroughly. Bowling Ball often gets picked, but she calls in sick a lot.

So I'm pulling the infectious waste out of 7 East that my first shift counterpart didn't feel like pulling when I get the call: 7 West has been added to my regular duties at 7 East, 7 North, 7 Center and Women's Clinic.

20 minutes later they're wheeling the hallway veteran into 7W29 over my still wet floor. That's as fast as I can clean a patient room and do a good job of it.

This crapola of "We're here for the veterans" should be changed to "we're here to game the performance bonuses."

There's a lot involved in cleaning a patient room. The bathroom has to be cleaned. Infectious and regular waste cans emptied and re-bagged. The bed has to be made with new clean linen. Dispensers filled. Floor mopped. But the most important thing is that all surfaces, especially the bed have to be wiped thoroughly with Wexcide. Don't want the new patient to get one of the 14 Hospital Acquired Infections you can get in a VA hospital.