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Healthcare Maintenance: Life or Death
A hospital in Madrid, Spain, was forced to dismantle its Intensive Care Unit
after 18 patients died and 250 became ill from a hospital borne infection. This
incident was just the latest in an epidemic of infections that, according to
the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality has more than doubled over the
last five years.
Hospital borne infections, or nosocomial infections as they are called, are
blamed for as many as two million deaths every year in the United States. One
agency has listed the deaths from hospital infections as the eighth leading
cause of death in the United States.
The causes of such infections have been blamed on the overuse of antibiotics
and antiseptics as well as the lack of training and information regarding
these infections and methods to prevent their spread in hospitals and healthcare
facilities.
Legislatures in many states have bills pending or in committee that would
impose some form of reporting by healthcare facilities and hospitals of
infection outbreaks. Twenty-two states have passed such measures but the reporting
requirements
vary widely and some critics maintain that medical lobbies have watered
down
the reporting requirements in many states. Critics charge that hospitals
and healthcare facilities are reluctant to tell the public of infectious
outbreaks
for fear that patients would refuse treatment at their facilities.
All politicking aside, the bottom line is that people are getting sick
and dying from infections they pick up in hospitals and healthcare facilities
and it is the facility operating engineers who should be playing a major
role in stopping these infections.
That having been said, it is very rare that hospitals recognize the need to
provide training to their maintenance staff. Many hospitals still consider
maintenance workers a necessary expense that should be kept to a minimum cost.
Poorly trained and less supported maintenance workers inhabit every area of
our nation’s hospitals, handling everything from sewage lines to sterilizers
without ever receiving training on prevention of infection.
Hospitals have made headway when it comes to medical staff training and in
new restrictions for the construction of healthcare facilities. But you would
think that some brain surgeon might figure out that maintenance people are
in every single area of a hospital and it might just make sense to give them
some training on how to prevent infectious spread.
The problem confronted here is that many hospitals want to keep their maintenance
personnel in the dark. In fact, they want to keep their maintenance personnel
stupid. Many hospitals are virulently anti-union and seek to pay the lowest
wages absolutely possible. They realize that an educated and well-qualified
workforce commands higher wages and more respect. Unfortunately, that’s
something too many hospital administrators aren’t willing to cede to
a group they merely tolerate as necessary.
The result of this is that patients
are dying and hospitals are
lying. Every American
should have a right to
know what the rate of
hospital infections are,
before they or a loved
one is required to be
admitted to that
hospital.
Every maintenance worker and operating engineer in hospital and healthcare
settings should receive the training necessary to assist in prevention of nosocomial
infections.
It’s past time for hospitals to stop trying to hide the ugly truth
about patients dying from infections. Problems are better resolved when they
are
made known and not hidden behind a medical screen. We face an epidemic in this
country and in other parts of the world that will only be solved when we recognize
that every member of a healthcare or hospital staff plays a role in the health
and wellbeing of the patients inside that facility. The maintenance personnel
in these facilities should represent the very best of the industry and not
the very least paid nor the very least respected.
This isn’t a matter for negotiation; it’s a matter of life and
death.
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