Environmental Services

One good housekeeper can prevent more diseases than a dozen doctors can cure. Some patients are so ill that a healthcare-associated infection (HAI) can take a patients life, even if there were a room full of doctors to provide treatment. Just as medical personnel care for patients, environmental services (ES) professionals work to keep hospitals healthy. This article is a nuts-and-bolts piece meant to improve the health of healthcare facilities. There are a few basic things we need to do to make ES departments effective -- proper hiring and training of staff, adequate design of ES work areas, accurate appraisal of task loads, and concise time management of the frontline staff.