GETTING READY FOR FALL AND WINTER – ISSUE NO. 69

We had a few stories this week concerning cleaning our summer equipment and putting it away for the fall and winter. These stories reminded me of when I worked in CSSD. One of the tasks we called "weekend work" was cleaning the shelves and rotating the stock each quarter. We tried to do this these tasks each fall, winter, spring and summer. If I remember correctly, these were tasks not many of my employees enjoyed doing. Once, my staff found a tray from a physician who had left a few years earlier and I wondered how we missed taking his tray out of service. What also amazed me was the "dust bunnies" we would find on the floor underneath each shelf. Our area was "cleaned" each shift, but, those "dust bunnies' had a way of multiplying. We eventually solved the "dust bunnies" issue by adopting a check sheet that housekeeping would sign off on each time they cleaned the area. Also, we ended up purchasing and using solid shelves where necessary. We found that the various standards and guidelines supported having a solid shelf on the bottom level and it made buying these products easy. As we get ready at home for fall and winter and start to put our summer items away, it might be a good time to look at your department and see if you have any "dust bunnies" to round up.