Piddocke, Pamela
Person Preferred Name
Pamela Piddocke
Affiliation
Related Works
Content type
Digital Document
Abstract
This report is an examination of cleaning services and monitoring mechanisms at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, British Columbia. It was prompted by concerns that the safety of Greater Vancouver hospitals and long-term care facilities has been compromised since the privatization of housekeeping services in 2003.
Nurses and other care providers in the Vancouver Coastal Health region are alarmed by deteriorating standards in cleanliness and by
communication difficulties with cleaning contractors. In
particular, hospital staff are deeply worried that infection
control practices are slipping. They are concerned that
the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority does not have a
monitoring system that can accurately gauge the cleanliness of facilities, the soundness of infection control practices, and the capacity of vendors to deliver knowledgeable, responsive, and stable cleaning services. They are troubled that nurses must spend an inordinate amount of time making service requests, which means less time for direct patient care. They are concerned that cleaning problems are contributing to back-ups in the Emergency Department and hence to slower responses to the public. Risks to patients, the community, workers, and the health care system itself appear to be on the rise.
The project is a collaboration of the B.C. Nurses’ Union and the Hospital Employees’ Union in consultation with the Health Sciences Association. Our members wanted a systematic and credible means of assessing the state of cleaning and infection control practices since privatization. To this end, we conducted an environmental scan of one facility – St. Paul’s Hospital, with a particular emphasis on the Emergency Department – and gathered data from the hospital’s health care team. We also examined scientific literature regarding relationships between hospital cleanliness, hospital-acquired infections, and privatized housekeeping services; reviewed documents from the health authority; and interviewed experts. The project does not claim to be a full research study but rather a preliminary data collection and analysis that identifies key problems and future avenues for study and action.
Origin Information
Content type
Digital Document
Abstract
The learning initiative called the British Columbia Nursing Administrative Leadership Institute (BCNLI) for first line nurse leaders was developed to address the need for educating and mentoring new nurse leaders. The program was a joint project between the Ministry of Health Services Nursing Directorate, British Columbia’s Chief Nursing Officers and the School of Nursing at UBC. The BCNLI program is evidenced based and included information on leadership, management concepts and relevant issues for leaders, (MacPhee & Bouthillette, 2008). The front line nurse leaders who participated were provided education and mentoring, to increase their skills. The front line nursing leaders selected year long projects as part of the program. This study examined if there was any change to the types and scope of control of projects front line nurse leaders chose as part of learning and mentoring initiative. 211 nurse leaders’ projects from the BCNLI project data web pages were examined for scope of control, type of project, and Donabedian’s (1982) structure process outcomes framework using content analysis (Graneheim & Lundman, 2004). These projects provide a window to the types of issues that were relevant and seen as important to the front line nurse leader participants in each cohort of the BCNLI program from 2007 to 2010. This research found that there was no change between the nine cohorts as to structure or process coding. The majority of the projects were structure coded. The content analysis identified five main themes of recruitment/retenton, communication, education, care delivery evaluation, and tool development. The ability to identify the scope of projects of front line nurse leaders was important as very little research exists on scope of control for front line nurse leaders. Only 61% of the projects are at the nursing unit or front line (level two) position. There are concerns that front line nurse leaders were working beyond the nursing unit level. This research will help to understand if nurse leaders are taking on issues or problems that are beyond their roles and the type of projects that exist in the British Columbia Health Care.
Origin Information