Today starts International Housekeepers Week sponsored by the International Executive Housekeepers Association (IEHA). UNCsim teams would like to recognize and thank this amazing group of professionals for their critical role in making our work possible.
Our many teams throughout UNC Hospitals and the Healthcare System as a whole utilize in-situ simulation in addition to dedicated simulation space to help meet our training objectives. In-situ simulations are when we go into actual clinical spaces and utilize the team’s own resources to better match the realism of their day to day work. These sessions are interdisciplinary, meaning that we bring many types of clinicians and other staff into the experience. These allow us to evaluate how the “whole” team functions and not just a subset of those providers.
The ability to move quickly into and out of the clinical spaces without impacting the normal workflow can be highly dependent on our amazing housekeeping team. They provide fast turn arounds after a patient is discharged so that simulation teams can train in the room before the next patient is admitted. In some cases they clean rooms while patients are in the OR or MRI, allowing a session before the patient returns to their room.
Another aspect of our training is that the simulation team and clinical team occasionally leave a mess. Our housekeeping teams work to help us vacate rooms and ensure that we maintain best infection control practices for our facility. Some of our quality improvement projects involve mocking severe bleeding. These pools of fake blood manage to go everywhere. Our housekeeping teams understand the importance of these drills and jump right in to ensure a safe working environment for the next team with real patients.
In addition to supporting our in-situ efforts, our housekeeping team does an incredible job maintaining all of the multiple dedicated simulation labs around campus. Our spaces are highly unique and specialized so the care and attention paid to maintaining our labs is very important. We come in every day knowing that our environment is as ready as our learners.
In a busy academic hospital, space and clinician time are a premium so anything that can be done to improve patient safety continuously is imperative. Our amazing housekeepers at UNC actively make sure that space and time are both maximized. We really can not thank you all enough! –UNCsim Teams