Practice 200% accountability: Please stash your trash where it belongs

With a lot of areas to cover and extra, COVID-related cleaning tasks, Environmental Services staff members like Linda Evans need everyone’s help to keep the hospital clean and safe.

Dirty gloves on linen carts. Disposable gowns stuffed above light fixtures. Food wrappers on empty beds parked in hallways. Shoes – yes, shoes – left in stairwells. Environmental Services staff have pretty much seen – and cleaned – it all.

“Unfortunately, a lot of the things we pick up are items employees use, and we find them in places where patients and visitors generally don’t go,” said Stephen Branch, Environmental Services system director, York Street and Saint Raphael campuses. “Yes, it is Environmental Services’ job to keep the hospital clean, but we need everyone’s help.”

Branch reminds all employees to properly dispose of items in trash cans or other appropriate receptacles – even employees working in areas patients and visitors don’t see. Employees can also help by picking up trash others have left (wear gloves or use a clean paper towel).

“We’ve been hearing the phrase ‘We’re all in this together’ a lot lately,” Branch said. “It also applies to helping us keep the hospital clean and safe. The cleanliness of the hospital doesn’t reflect just on one department, it reflects on all of us. This is what we represent.”