EBME Forums Forums Management Professional Issues Nursing Issues DIRTY equipment

As per Bob, please

cheers

It seems that (some)nurses arent even aware of the concept of cross contamination, I think that any equipment that is 'suspect' the equipment should be left on the wards until its cleaned and let the ward managers know.

Huw.E
Alot of the nursing staff don't seem to see unclean equipment as a health problem. If they did, they'd do something about it. Mind you, they ought to know. Perhaps it's us. We're not highly trained nursing 'professionals'.

cheers

Has anyone else noticed that the cleaning of
equipment tends to be an nhs issue.
Nurses brought in from far off shores to work
in the nhs do tend to look after the equipment better, in my opinion.
Maybe its beacause our home grown crop are used to having everything done for them.

Spot on with that one Karl , maybe if football is the "English disease" then the lack of care in cleaning equipment is a "British disease"

I'd go even furhter to say that in my dabbles with the Private Sector..excuse me whilst I spit.. that their "housekeeping" is of a lot higher standard. The equipment was definitely in a better condition and was always presented in a clean condition.

What this points to.. maybe slacking standards in the good old NHS, big organisation no need to bother with the small attention to details..after all where are they going to go if they don't like it.

Are there any nurses out there who could enlighten us oink engineering types, as to why they dont see dirty equipment as an issue for the main carer of patients to be bothered about.
Obviously the senior "management" grade nurses spout on about it all the time, but its really the shop floor level bods that need to be taking pride in their working space.
Or should we, the oinks, be reporting dirty equipment via clinical risk groups etc as a routine.
Then at least when somthing goes wrong we can say told ye so.

Dave, The little intemperance's are normally far too busy with their lipstick and Velcro to bother cleaning equipment.

Hello the real world !
If you bother to look at nurse training now, you will find that students are taught at degree level about lots of medical issues, unfortunately basic things like equipment care, communication and co-operation with other departments are overlooked or under emphasised.
Nursing staff are sent out qualified with little hospital experience and unrealistic ideas of the job they are expected to do by the NHS.
I have often been told “cleaning equipment is not my job” by junior and senior nursing staff.
The HCA is now expected to do all the menial nursing tasks. Gone are the days of the dedicated and practical SEN's and wards with more than two trained staff on duty at once.
Perhaps the answer might lie in some input into the Health Care Assistants training and the NVQ schemes.
It would be more a fruitful avenue of investigation than the blame culture and buck passing I can read here, then the endless paper treadmill may serve the use for which it was designed.
Rather than fire fighting we train HCA's to clean equipment so they don't break it, investment of time can pay off in the long run.

Here here, I could not agree more with this "Gal." give her a lollipop.

Ever onward, ever upward.

Maybe we'll get to the day when the "degree" level nurses are superceeded by the "masters" level and eventually the "doctorate" level at entry point.

Hopefully then all those other nasty little duties like looking after patients will have been passed on to the "masters" level entry HCA's who can pass on instructions to the "degree" level Ward Clerks who can finally get the right level of person to clean the equipment effectively, namely the domestics.

They can always lob the syringe drivers in their mop buckets and wheel them down to Biomed hence solving the decontamination and transport issues in one bold sweep.

Oops, forgot, no-one will be in the department; by that stage we'll be at "Professorship" level and will be holding seminars in the Post Grad centre for the 2nd year Portering degree students on the subject "Forces and motions involved in Oxy cylinder handling"