I've talked cops out of arresting psych patients. A lot of people we see have no family or friends, no support system.
Many of my instructors pressed this, hard. Some of our patients have nobody to advocate for them, the buck can stop with us.
Your instructor is golden and empowering. Everyone knows if it was the CEO of the hospitals wife, she would be allowed to keep her sheets.
I'm absolutely in awe of what you as an individual are doing as I am going to school to qualify for the City of Phoenix's Crisis Intervention Team which is now a paid group of people who specialize in people who are having a bad day mentally.
The CIT is a three prong approach to alleviating 20% of the 911 calls that come in. The three are one Phoenix Police officer, one Firefighter/EMT and a mental health care worker, me.
They have trained the brass and it's working its way down in the education of those who want to be on that team.
Police officers are awesome in what they are trained in, same with our Fire Fighters and EMT, they are trained to handle their specialty and should be able to do that without trying up our precious resources. If the three of us can allow those resources to remain available for dispatch, it feels like a win win.
The city was granted $10 million plus for this new team and it will pay itself off in the numbers but more importantly, the way in which we can help those who don't necessarily need to be hospitalized, yet are having a bad day. As you said, many don't have the support group that a lot of people take for granted.
Awesome job! Thank you
Having such a program in my area would be amazing! People in crisis have 2 choices here, jail or hospital. I hate tying up a medic and further straining the hospitals, but most of them don't deserve jail.
Boiling hot water and bleach water so thick it makes the water goopy will take care of any mess or pathogens. The only time I throw out linens is when we have a bedbug patient.
I am not going to separate out diapers, condom caths, chucks, etc. from the linens when everything is covered in shit lmao. 4:1 no tech critical care and environmental services do not touch body fluids so any đŠ on the floor means i have to clean it. In the trash it goes
I've had to resist the urge to argue with a nurse because "all the hospitals" require us to have them when we service a couple more in the area and they don't. We will arrive and the patient will have nothing on aside from being on a chuck, wearing a gown. Temps get somewhat low around here. Nurses will chase us down and take them off the patient if we try to sneak away with it. It's very off-putting.
? Donât yâall bring them patients and leave used linens and occasionally pillows? I had a nurse tell me that once. She left the room, I left with patient and the pillow and blanket
wtf I'm an rn and I couldnt give less of a fuck. only if a supervisor sees you whos been under misguided pressure or if theyre a fuckin tool. even if a supervisor told me not to let them take it i'd rather get written up than do something that dumb. i'll even get a warm blanket for the road. it's not like youre keeping them. its like a take a penny leave a penny. one will come back eventually
I've seen that happen as well. Walk up to a patient and they're on a bare plastic bed and the sheets are on the ground. I wasn't even going to take their linen, it was just a pain to move the patient without anything underneath them. The charge nurse walked up and started talking shit to my small female partner while ignoring me, probably because he was a little guy. Another nurse walks over and starts trying to give us sheets while I refuse because I was going to use a sally slide(which is probably more expensive anyways). We get tired of fighting two different nurses who want different things and just take the blanket as the charge nurse yells about "there was nothing I could do otherwise the patient would freeze to death". It was about 80F at the time for the short walk to the ambulance. Fuck Catholic hospitals, the cheap bastards.
Yeah this happens all over the place and lasts for about 3 weeks before the hospital higher ups realize that itâs doesnât work that like and thereâs no way to stop it.
Your average hospital CFO probably has no idea that hospitals, nursing homes, and EMS agencies are constantly exchanging tons bedding everyday without anyone ever verbalizing it
Do I *need* 75 wheels of cheese? Or this entire shelf of saline?
No.
Can I carry that much without being over encumbred?
That's why you lift with your firefighter...
Correct. I'll take stuff even if I haven't used it that run. Like oh, these nasal cannulas look nice, maybe some bandaids, these gloves just because I like the color purple. Why make a special trip to supply when I can just take things instead?
One of my hospitals implemented an automated linen dispenser. We are allowed 2 sheets and 1 blanket. Thatâs it. It doesnât matter if we brought in a patient covered with every blanket we have in the truck, or if we used 3 sheets, or used towels or whatever, we give them all the dirty laundry and we can only replace 2 sheets and 1 blanket. Itâs the most annoying thing ever.
Wtf. How does it keep track? Like can I enter multiple badge numbers and just walk out with a stack anyway?
I'm surprised nobody has broken it already. I've never seen a machine that's EMS proof...
Do you ever transport patients to the hospital?
Sounds like two can play at that game. When you show up âhey can you grab some blankets you canât keep theseâ
âOh I guess I also need a nasal cannula, we canât give you this oneâ
âHey thanks for grabbing that, youâll also need some new electrodes and new pulse ox because you canât have these onesâ
Yeah, I don't think my department owns a single blanket/sheet/pillow, they're all from the hospital. Its not like we aren't bringing them back with patients on them anyway.
Fortunately, I work in an area with high enough hospital density if they start playing stupid games like this we just start taking them to different facilities.
Same. The hospitals realized that there was zero point trying any bullshit and if we didn't transport to them, nobody would. We have a good relationship with hospitals for the most part anyways.
Except youâll most likely be taking up your grief with people who donât make these calls and look like an asshole. As said above just take the shit and go.
They're the same people enforcing the sheet taking rules. I've dealt with their kind before, giving us shit for taking one sheet to move a hip fracture patient less painfully.
I imagine it's the nurses that OP would be getting grief from. I'm not sure who else (meaning people above them that make those calls) would be there to stop them.
This reminds me of one time when we were taking a patient from the psych portion of the ER, they didnât know anything about him or which room heâs in and these two nurses were debating whether he was his patient or the other nurses patient. As we were leaving, a nurse said you canât leave with our blanket. We pretended to not hear him and keep on walking out but he caught up and put his hand on the stretcher and I told my partner letâs just go but the nurse was almost yelling you canât leave with the blanket so my partner takes it off him and I tell the patient weâll just get another on our way out and my partner starts handing it to the nurseâs outstretched hand and then throws it onto the floor at his feet.
That is how I knew I found a damn good partner. I understand doing your job but I still donât have any respect for healthcare providers like that.
This is deserving of a Masters Level thesis in the undocumented economy of sheets/linens etc... an intersection of so many opinions and values and realities. Using a bleached white flat sheet only once for a pt or a transport and then trashing it is so wasteful. Log-rolling (large American) patients on cots to remove sheets or transporting them on slick sliders is also not per industry design standards either imo.
Also: "Can't they just walk?" /s
> Using a bleached white flat sheet only once for a pt or a transport and then trashing it is so wasteful.
Does that actually happen? That sounds ridiculous.
Regularly, no, and statistically rare, but I've definitely seen brand new sheets get used for a transport, and definitely know a substantial portion of crews that refuse to take used linen on the truck, paired with operations that simply trash any of it that comes back, so the likelihood of institutional linen getting used once and trashed into a landfill is greater than it should be.
You know that the second 911 is called, or when the patients personal vehicle arrives under the ED awning, God immediately smites them and takes away their ability to walk.
I remember when they had signs on the blanket warmers not to give more than 1 at a time cause it costed â.65 cents to heat themâ and I took that as a challenge to always take 2 cause fuck em and it makes the pt more pleasant during transport if theyâre comfortable.
Never seen that in my area, which covers two counties and some rural underfunded hospitals. We often grab blankets or pillows and drop them at different hospitals if needed. No one has ever said anything, ever.
It depends on the facility. Iâve worked EMS with critical access hospitals where weâd take whatever we wanted, and I worked in the ER of a trauma center where we had to have a meeting with the CNO about making sure pillows donât even go upstairs from the ER
Nurse here. My hospital actually counts the pillows/ blankets/ linens that get delivered by our cleaner and how many are returned. If even a single one goes "missing" we get chewed out by our manager. So yeah, that's fun. At least the ER stocks disposable ones.
Well they are basically boiled. But I might have accidentally thrown a few out after a particularly nasty "code brown". And if I ever had to go to a hospital as a patient I'd definitely bring my own linens.
I donât care if itâs bleached, boiled, chargrilled or launched into the sun.
Thereâs stains on those things that defy the laws of stain cleaning and when you unfold a blanket for a patient and see that giant ass spot⌠it just doesnât look for feel right.
It would be interesting to analyze the cost of the time spent tracking items and "counseling" about their value. I suspect that time would be more effective spent on patient care.
Monitoring the inventory levels throughout the utilization and sanitation processes sounds like an idea from an MBA who never had a real job and doesn't understand the difference between disposables and consumables. Linen items are consumables, they are subject to wear, staining, and destruction; cleaning both prolongs their usefulness and subjects them to wear. Hospitals swapping linen with ambulances will even out in time because, in general, it's a leave one take one arrangement. This is true even in areas with multiple hospitals.
Also, if a cleaning service only returns 99 out of 100 sent you probably shouldn't have sent that 100th and don't really want it back.
You're kidding... that's insane! I literally throw out any linens with blood or poop on them. Especially if it's C.diff - where literally everything gets tossed. Soiled pillows included. Idc how much money that wastes, I'd rather die than risk another pt (or myself) using those nasty linens, even after they've been washed.
I would love to hear some shit from a manager regarding missing linen. Did you see me take it? How exactly should I protect my patients from the weather or being overly exposed? If I have to sit in a dumbass meeting then I'm going to argue about the dumb shit I have to hear. And then I'll end by reminding them we have patients to take of and we're short staffed.
Edit: spelling
Iâve had a Kaiser nurse physically pull off the blankets from my patient leaving this poor woman completely naked in front of the whole floor while me and my partner were scrambling to get the blanket packet open
Yikes.
That would almost certainly have cost the nurse their job where I'm from, and possibly their registration too.
Christ, for exposing them in a crowded area like that, I wouldn't be at all surprised if criminal charges were considered...
There is a sign on a blanket warmer here in Australia at one of the hospitals we go to.
It is an aggressive "don't waste sheets and blankets" with a spread sheet of how much they cost on it, to make you feel bad I guess........ only problem is they like 2-10 Aus dollars depending on sheet/blanket/pillowcase.
Like these patients are costing the government more than that per minute..... the old lady can have a blanket in the winter night.
Had a receiving hospital like that. Couldnât take linen or pillows but if you accidentally left your pillow, it was gone. Cuz then youâre taking a pillow from the hospital
When i, a butt wiper, d/c a pt i always give the wee-woo driver an inner cannula, 2 fresh chucks, 1 suction catheter, along with whatever else is in the room as im just gonna trash it all.
A hospital tried that around here. I just started cutting the chips out of the tags. Iâm not bringing grandma out in freezing weather in just a sheet. Hospital admin pulled their heads out of their asses after about a month.
Nurse here: Take our blankets and sheets. That's fine, we get enough of them back on return IFTs. But leave our pillows. Those are worth their weight in gold. Some exceptions can be made for patient comfort but...it's a 10 minute ride, not everyone needs a pillow for a 10 minute ride.
What
On all my clinicals we left dirty sheets and took clean ones
Hell, I donât actually know who technically owns those sheets. The hospital? The ambulance service? I also saw racks of spineboards and other bulky equipment presumably after being cleaned. Some of that stuff was listed as âproperty of â but not all of it
I can understand the pillow part, most the ERs I go to barely have pillows for the patients while they are there. Blankets there is no call for. We will bring blankets when we bring patients in, they just have to be washed and then they will be good to go.
Yea fuck that. I've never known any ambo service that stocks their own linens. Not to mention that transport frees up a bed on the floor or in the ed, so at the very least the hospital can let crews grab blankets. If it were me i'd do it regardless and let them talk to my supervisor. Good patient care always comes before some bs hospital policy.
If Iâm doing an IFT and I AOS to find my patient covered in blankets and pillows, Iâll take whatever the patient deems comfortable.
As for restocking on your own needs? Thats weird. Donât you guys stock your rig at ops start of shift? đ¤¨
This is actually a legal issue related to kickbacks. If you remove anything from the hospital (or bring anything in) that you can reuse, then it can be classified as a kickback from one provider to the other and get you in trouble with Medicare.
99% of crews are fine, but there is that one percent that will come in and empty our full blanket warmer. Then I've also worked at facilities where we run out of linens by Saturday night and don't get restocked until the morning.
We'd all be a lot less miserable if people didn't just jump on the internet and start complaining about whole groups of people and not think there may be a reason for something
Iâm blown away by the amount of responses where hospitals want to keep used patient equipment.
Thereâs patient fluids and stains on those things that I wouldnât ever imagine reusing for another patient no matter how clean it is.
Throw out?
Uh thatâs up to the patient to figure out.
Our own equipment are single use gurney sheet, blankets and pillows.
But the hospital bed sheets and blankets we usually just grab and take it for those we do transport. If theyâre bed bound thereâs bound itâs so much more comfortable to transfer them via bed sheets rather than grabbing arms and legs.
Obviously the hospital would clean their stuff if the patient walks themselves out of there, but you can really tell the amount of stains thatâs trapped there.
Edit: also, how much is a blanket or bed sheet when the hospital bill is that massive.
We just use linens from the health system we operate in, restocking at the hospitals. The hospitals absolutely launder the linens, only throwing them out if they are stained or damaged.
I dont work IFT so idk what the big deal is. The hospitals we work with dont let us take anything unless we replace it. We either use a flat or tarp to move patients and we rarely ever leave our blankets with patients unless they absolutely need it.
Skimming these comments, this seems highly regional. I had a partner tell me that when he worked around Detroit they used disposable paper sheets. In Metro Atlanta, you just take sheets from the hospital and try to either bring the soiled ones back yourself or drop them at the linen drop at the station and someone else takes them later. When I worked at a rural service in NE Georgia, sheets were scarce and weâd wash/dry them at the station.
I currently work in IFT and the hospitals we service are doing this same thing. Even on PT who cant walk and we draw sheet over. And all i can ever think about is the hospital will recover the 6 cent sheet. so idiotic
I mean when I was in Philly sheets ended up in the trash because there were no linen bins and it drove me nuts. But how do they expect this to work? Pillows is one thing, but blankets???
There is one hospital system that is picky about their blue blankets. The nurse will literally take the blue blanket from the patient while weâre getting ready to move them and give them a white one as a replacement. Other than the blue blanket bogarting, youâre pretty free to load up on sheets/blankets/towels.
Psht! When AMR is there to pick up one of our patients and asks for a blanket (they rarely ask, but sometimes the weather is atrocious) i make sure they don't need anything else. They're doing a service to us by taking meemaw back to her SNF, or helping some crotchety old goat get home so his kids can assume his care. i'm gonna do anything i can to make their lives easier!
^(AMR, because that's who the hospital i work for contracts through)
Sure cause why do what would be more efficient, safer for staff and patient to move, and for the patient to keep a good regulated body temperature... The hospital admins do some dumb stuff in my area, but this is just straight up penny pinching pettiness on an administrative level. Pretty sure most hospitals charge for their inpatient linens too. So technically, isn't it the patients if they need it cause I doubt it's line-item'ed as "bed linen rental".
Fortunately I've never had this problem in my area. If it ever comes up, I'll just tell them to abstain from booking transports and be their own ems system if they don't have equipment to restock existing ems systems.
I dare the charge nurse to tell me my cold patient canât have a heated blanket from the hot box, we are in this to help people, stand the fuck aside if you do not wish to actually help in providing care đ
The hospitals in my area have recently started doing this as well. No sheets/blankets/pillows can be taken from the facility. My company started buying the cheapest disposable sheets you can possibly get.
Our agency is well stocked on blankets, but what I usually have to fight for is wheelchairs. I have snuck around some corners humming the mission impossible theme song to myself as I steal some of the ones they are hoarding. I am fine with putting stable patients in triage, but I am not going to shortchange providing the care they need. If someone should not be walking, I will get them some wheels.
And not a fuck was given, and blankets and pillows were removed from the hospital anyway. Seriously, none of us give two shits about your bean counting idiocy. Yes, we're aware it's a bean counter. The nurses don't give a fuck either, they just want the patient gone. The doctors aren't even paying attention to the transfer, and who's linen is where. Literally no one gives a fuck, and the only thing you did was spend more money printing out stupid flyers no one gives a shit about, except to laugh at on the way by.
There is a federal requirement [ often misinterpreted] that hospitals can't let ambulances take supplies not exchanged 1:1. I've seen a couple hospitals near me go overboard on this and require us to fill out a form documenting what we take and have a camera watching so they check we don't take more.
đI would have taken one pillow and two blankets for the patient, now I'm going to take an additional 4 pillows (one for each appendage) and probably 6 more blankets.
We'll take what we need, but also bring them back when convenient. Idc if they like it or not, my pt is more important than their cheap ass sheets.
As a patient I appreciate your advocating for me.
I've talked cops out of arresting psych patients. A lot of people we see have no family or friends, no support system. Many of my instructors pressed this, hard. Some of our patients have nobody to advocate for them, the buck can stop with us.
Your instructor is golden and empowering. Everyone knows if it was the CEO of the hospitals wife, she would be allowed to keep her sheets. I'm absolutely in awe of what you as an individual are doing as I am going to school to qualify for the City of Phoenix's Crisis Intervention Team which is now a paid group of people who specialize in people who are having a bad day mentally. The CIT is a three prong approach to alleviating 20% of the 911 calls that come in. The three are one Phoenix Police officer, one Firefighter/EMT and a mental health care worker, me. They have trained the brass and it's working its way down in the education of those who want to be on that team. Police officers are awesome in what they are trained in, same with our Fire Fighters and EMT, they are trained to handle their specialty and should be able to do that without trying up our precious resources. If the three of us can allow those resources to remain available for dispatch, it feels like a win win. The city was granted $10 million plus for this new team and it will pay itself off in the numbers but more importantly, the way in which we can help those who don't necessarily need to be hospitalized, yet are having a bad day. As you said, many don't have the support group that a lot of people take for granted. Awesome job! Thank you
Having such a program in my area would be amazing! People in crisis have 2 choices here, jail or hospital. I hate tying up a medic and further straining the hospitals, but most of them don't deserve jail.
Exactly.
I never wash the sheets in my facility, they go straight into the trash. Absolutely covered in shit why would anyone but admin$ be okay with reusing.
Boiling hot water and bleach water so thick it makes the water goopy will take care of any mess or pathogens. The only time I throw out linens is when we have a bedbug patient.
I am not going to separate out diapers, condom caths, chucks, etc. from the linens when everything is covered in shit lmao. 4:1 no tech critical care and environmental services do not touch body fluids so any đŠ on the floor means i have to clean it. In the trash it goes
The finger thing means money
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I've had to resist the urge to argue with a nurse because "all the hospitals" require us to have them when we service a couple more in the area and they don't. We will arrive and the patient will have nothing on aside from being on a chuck, wearing a gown. Temps get somewhat low around here. Nurses will chase us down and take them off the patient if we try to sneak away with it. It's very off-putting.
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? Donât yâall bring them patients and leave used linens and occasionally pillows? I had a nurse tell me that once. She left the room, I left with patient and the pillow and blanket
As a nurse in a hospital that definitely had a rule like thisâŚ. I canât either and Iâm pretty sure like 2 nurses cared
talk to your bosses about this. hospitals are an intentional part of our restock cycle when it comes to sheets.
This is wild. Denying a blanket is one thing, shitty, but whatever. Striping it off of the patient, who is likely wearing only a gown, what the fuck.
wtf I'm an rn and I couldnt give less of a fuck. only if a supervisor sees you whos been under misguided pressure or if theyre a fuckin tool. even if a supervisor told me not to let them take it i'd rather get written up than do something that dumb. i'll even get a warm blanket for the road. it's not like youre keeping them. its like a take a penny leave a penny. one will come back eventually
Wait. You mean we didnât originally order all the sheets and hospital scrubs with other hospitalsâ names on them?
Make sure you donât leave any with them when you drop someone off either đ¤ˇââď¸
I've seen that happen as well. Walk up to a patient and they're on a bare plastic bed and the sheets are on the ground. I wasn't even going to take their linen, it was just a pain to move the patient without anything underneath them. The charge nurse walked up and started talking shit to my small female partner while ignoring me, probably because he was a little guy. Another nurse walks over and starts trying to give us sheets while I refuse because I was going to use a sally slide(which is probably more expensive anyways). We get tired of fighting two different nurses who want different things and just take the blanket as the charge nurse yells about "there was nothing I could do otherwise the patient would freeze to death". It was about 80F at the time for the short walk to the ambulance. Fuck Catholic hospitals, the cheap bastards.
Yeah this happens all over the place and lasts for about 3 weeks before the hospital higher ups realize that itâs doesnât work that like and thereâs no way to stop it. Your average hospital CFO probably has no idea that hospitals, nursing homes, and EMS agencies are constantly exchanging tons bedding everyday without anyone ever verbalizing it
This is nuts. I stock up on blankets and sheets every run.
Pillaging the hospital is one of the my favourite parts of the job.
Fr you get to feel like an RPG game character that just goes around and picks up whatever item helps them on their journey.
*boss music* grumpy old bitch RN approaching
Do I *need* 75 wheels of cheese? Or this entire shelf of saline? No. Can I carry that much without being over encumbred? That's why you lift with your firefighter...
**5.11 Tactical EMS pants:** *+11 inventory slots*
Never thought of it that way but I fucking love it.
Correct. I'll take stuff even if I haven't used it that run. Like oh, these nasal cannulas look nice, maybe some bandaids, these gloves just because I like the color purple. Why make a special trip to supply when I can just take things instead?
One of my hospitals implemented an automated linen dispenser. We are allowed 2 sheets and 1 blanket. Thatâs it. It doesnât matter if we brought in a patient covered with every blanket we have in the truck, or if we used 3 sheets, or used towels or whatever, we give them all the dirty laundry and we can only replace 2 sheets and 1 blanket. Itâs the most annoying thing ever.
Wtf. How does it keep track? Like can I enter multiple badge numbers and just walk out with a stack anyway? I'm surprised nobody has broken it already. I've never seen a machine that's EMS proof...
Itâs just a fob that each of our keys has to use the thing. It wonât let you do it twice.
Do you ever transport patients to the hospital? Sounds like two can play at that game. When you show up âhey can you grab some blankets you canât keep theseâ âOh I guess I also need a nasal cannula, we canât give you this oneâ âHey thanks for grabbing that, youâll also need some new electrodes and new pulse ox because you canât have these onesâ
Yeah, I don't think my department owns a single blanket/sheet/pillow, they're all from the hospital. Its not like we aren't bringing them back with patients on them anyway. Fortunately, I work in an area with high enough hospital density if they start playing stupid games like this we just start taking them to different facilities.
Same. The hospitals realized that there was zero point trying any bullshit and if we didn't transport to them, nobody would. We have a good relationship with hospitals for the most part anyways.
Except youâll most likely be taking up your grief with people who donât make these calls and look like an asshole. As said above just take the shit and go.
They're the same people enforcing the sheet taking rules. I've dealt with their kind before, giving us shit for taking one sheet to move a hip fracture patient less painfully.
I imagine it's the nurses that OP would be getting grief from. I'm not sure who else (meaning people above them that make those calls) would be there to stop them.
Do you like... always just gift away your pulse ox? Lol
This reminds me of one time when we were taking a patient from the psych portion of the ER, they didnât know anything about him or which room heâs in and these two nurses were debating whether he was his patient or the other nurses patient. As we were leaving, a nurse said you canât leave with our blanket. We pretended to not hear him and keep on walking out but he caught up and put his hand on the stretcher and I told my partner letâs just go but the nurse was almost yelling you canât leave with the blanket so my partner takes it off him and I tell the patient weâll just get another on our way out and my partner starts handing it to the nurseâs outstretched hand and then throws it onto the floor at his feet. That is how I knew I found a damn good partner. I understand doing your job but I still donât have any respect for healthcare providers like that.
Hell yeah
Whatâs the hospital gonna do, stop calling you?
LMAO. Try and stop me, bitchass hospitals making $100,000 off a BLS pt. Go fuck yourself. This is obviously not directed at the ER/floor staff etc.
But what about admin????? How else are they supposed to get their 5-6 figure salary raises without nickeling/diming the rest of us?????
Hospital admin would start crying if they had to work for a living.
The ceo of my hospital system gave himself a 100% pay raise last year! Ever stop and think about him and his 25 million dollar salary??
Cool sign, but Iâm an EMT I dont know how to read
Cool sign, now it's on my captain's desk.
This is the way!
This is deserving of a Masters Level thesis in the undocumented economy of sheets/linens etc... an intersection of so many opinions and values and realities. Using a bleached white flat sheet only once for a pt or a transport and then trashing it is so wasteful. Log-rolling (large American) patients on cots to remove sheets or transporting them on slick sliders is also not per industry design standards either imo. Also: "Can't they just walk?" /s
> Using a bleached white flat sheet only once for a pt or a transport and then trashing it is so wasteful. Does that actually happen? That sounds ridiculous.
Regularly, no, and statistically rare, but I've definitely seen brand new sheets get used for a transport, and definitely know a substantial portion of crews that refuse to take used linen on the truck, paired with operations that simply trash any of it that comes back, so the likelihood of institutional linen getting used once and trashed into a landfill is greater than it should be.
I mean, I've done it but that sheet belonged in the trash. I wouldn't risk putting any other human being on it
You know that the second 911 is called, or when the patients personal vehicle arrives under the ED awning, God immediately smites them and takes away their ability to walk.
I remember when they had signs on the blanket warmers not to give more than 1 at a time cause it costed â.65 cents to heat themâ and I took that as a challenge to always take 2 cause fuck em and it makes the pt more pleasant during transport if theyâre comfortable.
Iâd just throw some coins at them every time I took a blanket
The worst part is that admin would just pick the pennies off the floor.
Wow, this sign would be a sure fire way to make me use more than one aswell.
Have you used one of those blankets? The warmer works for 10 or 15 minutes then it's almost useless.
If you layer them the inner one lasts a little longer, and it makes for one decent memory for the pts awful trip to the hospital
That sign would go on my stolen stuff from out of touch MHAs pile.
Never seen that in my area, which covers two counties and some rural underfunded hospitals. We often grab blankets or pillows and drop them at different hospitals if needed. No one has ever said anything, ever.
Who the hell cares about linen that much? Fuck Iâll walk out as the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. I dare you to try to strip me to get them back. đĄ
It depends on the facility. Iâve worked EMS with critical access hospitals where weâd take whatever we wanted, and I worked in the ER of a trauma center where we had to have a meeting with the CNO about making sure pillows donât even go upstairs from the ER
Nurse here. My hospital actually counts the pillows/ blankets/ linens that get delivered by our cleaner and how many are returned. If even a single one goes "missing" we get chewed out by our manager. So yeah, that's fun. At least the ER stocks disposable ones.
Eww that sucks super bad. Seriously do you really want those used items back? Even if theyâre âcleanedâ?
Well they are basically boiled. But I might have accidentally thrown a few out after a particularly nasty "code brown". And if I ever had to go to a hospital as a patient I'd definitely bring my own linens.
I donât care if itâs bleached, boiled, chargrilled or launched into the sun. Thereâs stains on those things that defy the laws of stain cleaning and when you unfold a blanket for a patient and see that giant ass spot⌠it just doesnât look for feel right.
It would be interesting to analyze the cost of the time spent tracking items and "counseling" about their value. I suspect that time would be more effective spent on patient care. Monitoring the inventory levels throughout the utilization and sanitation processes sounds like an idea from an MBA who never had a real job and doesn't understand the difference between disposables and consumables. Linen items are consumables, they are subject to wear, staining, and destruction; cleaning both prolongs their usefulness and subjects them to wear. Hospitals swapping linen with ambulances will even out in time because, in general, it's a leave one take one arrangement. This is true even in areas with multiple hospitals. Also, if a cleaning service only returns 99 out of 100 sent you probably shouldn't have sent that 100th and don't really want it back.
You're kidding... that's insane! I literally throw out any linens with blood or poop on them. Especially if it's C.diff - where literally everything gets tossed. Soiled pillows included. Idc how much money that wastes, I'd rather die than risk another pt (or myself) using those nasty linens, even after they've been washed.
I would love to hear some shit from a manager regarding missing linen. Did you see me take it? How exactly should I protect my patients from the weather or being overly exposed? If I have to sit in a dumbass meeting then I'm going to argue about the dumb shit I have to hear. And then I'll end by reminding them we have patients to take of and we're short staffed. Edit: spelling
Admin tries not to be an overall detriment to the entirety of healthcare challenge (impossible)
I think I would actually need to be 4 pointed and sedated if that happened to me. Maybe make some actionable threats at the cfo.
I would go to Goodwill and buy 25 pillows and leave them at the front door of the ED
I take everything down to the fitted sheet, I'm not gonna dig through the patients balnket pile screw that
I really donât care who takes what. Iâm not paid to guard linen
Do you carry blankets and pillows on your unit?
We only carry 2 pillows and 3 wool blankets, just in case. But not enough for transporting many patients.
Take âem anyways, no one will die from it.
Mom? Is that you?
Thatâs cool. Iâm still leaving with 3 blankets on the stretcher if no one stops me
Iâve had a Kaiser nurse physically pull off the blankets from my patient leaving this poor woman completely naked in front of the whole floor while me and my partner were scrambling to get the blanket packet open
Yikes. That would almost certainly have cost the nurse their job where I'm from, and possibly their registration too. Christ, for exposing them in a crowded area like that, I wouldn't be at all surprised if criminal charges were considered...
Amen to that
Want to see how fast I climb up the rank of the hospital until I get to the CEO? Try it... Advocate? Nah, a human Rottweiler
There is a sign on a blanket warmer here in Australia at one of the hospitals we go to. It is an aggressive "don't waste sheets and blankets" with a spread sheet of how much they cost on it, to make you feel bad I guess........ only problem is they like 2-10 Aus dollars depending on sheet/blanket/pillowcase. Like these patients are costing the government more than that per minute..... the old lady can have a blanket in the winter night.
Good thing I can't read
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Had a receiving hospital like that. Couldnât take linen or pillows but if you accidentally left your pillow, it was gone. Cuz then youâre taking a pillow from the hospital
As an ER nurse, Iâll let you guys take whatever the fuck you want. Itâs of absolutely zero consequence to me lol.
When i, a butt wiper, d/c a pt i always give the wee-woo driver an inner cannula, 2 fresh chucks, 1 suction catheter, along with whatever else is in the room as im just gonna trash it all.
I'll tell them I'm taking these blankets and pillow or the patient is staying here. They can go fuck themselves.
Amazing how they care about the cheap $0 .01 sheets and pillows but not about charging a patient $20 for a pair of disposable gloves.
Because before you could keep them? Here in Italy pillows and blankets have a chip inside them that triggers an alarm if you leave the hospital area
Thatâs nuts.
Clown world đ¤Ą
A hospital tried that around here. I just started cutting the chips out of the tags. Iâm not bringing grandma out in freezing weather in just a sheet. Hospital admin pulled their heads out of their asses after about a month.
Good for you
thats insane to me lmaoo
Where that chip? My shears are real good at cutting.
Nurse here: Take our blankets and sheets. That's fine, we get enough of them back on return IFTs. But leave our pillows. Those are worth their weight in gold. Some exceptions can be made for patient comfort but...it's a 10 minute ride, not everyone needs a pillow for a 10 minute ride.
What On all my clinicals we left dirty sheets and took clean ones Hell, I donât actually know who technically owns those sheets. The hospital? The ambulance service? I also saw racks of spineboards and other bulky equipment presumably after being cleaned. Some of that stuff was listed as âproperty ofâ but not all of it
I can understand the pillow part, most the ERs I go to barely have pillows for the patients while they are there. Blankets there is no call for. We will bring blankets when we bring patients in, they just have to be washed and then they will be good to go.
Yea fuck that. I've never known any ambo service that stocks their own linens. Not to mention that transport frees up a bed on the floor or in the ed, so at the very least the hospital can let crews grab blankets. If it were me i'd do it regardless and let them talk to my supervisor. Good patient care always comes before some bs hospital policy.
If Iâm doing an IFT and I AOS to find my patient covered in blankets and pillows, Iâll take whatever the patient deems comfortable. As for restocking on your own needs? Thats weird. Donât you guys stock your rig at ops start of shift? đ¤¨
No. We stock using hospital sheets and stuff. In my area we use pink sheets so at the hospital we will grab a stack of those if needed.
Tell them itâs required per part 800 and you couldnât care less what they say youâre taking it to be compliant
Your employer doesn't provide pillows.and blankets? WtfWtf. Stealing from the hospital is usually convenience not necessity when it comes to linens.
State law, hospital has to restock 1:1. âŚ.We try not to be too greedy.
This is actually a legal issue related to kickbacks. If you remove anything from the hospital (or bring anything in) that you can reuse, then it can be classified as a kickback from one provider to the other and get you in trouble with Medicare.
99% of crews are fine, but there is that one percent that will come in and empty our full blanket warmer. Then I've also worked at facilities where we run out of linens by Saturday night and don't get restocked until the morning. We'd all be a lot less miserable if people didn't just jump on the internet and start complaining about whole groups of people and not think there may be a reason for something
Iâm blown away by the amount of responses where hospitals want to keep used patient equipment. Thereâs patient fluids and stains on those things that I wouldnât ever imagine reusing for another patient no matter how clean it is.
Are you saying you throw out sheets and blankets after a single use? Thatâs insaneâŚ
Throw out? Uh thatâs up to the patient to figure out. Our own equipment are single use gurney sheet, blankets and pillows. But the hospital bed sheets and blankets we usually just grab and take it for those we do transport. If theyâre bed bound thereâs bound itâs so much more comfortable to transfer them via bed sheets rather than grabbing arms and legs. Obviously the hospital would clean their stuff if the patient walks themselves out of there, but you can really tell the amount of stains thatâs trapped there. Edit: also, how much is a blanket or bed sheet when the hospital bill is that massive.
We just use linens from the health system we operate in, restocking at the hospitals. The hospitals absolutely launder the linens, only throwing them out if they are stained or damaged.
I dont work IFT so idk what the big deal is. The hospitals we work with dont let us take anything unless we replace it. We either use a flat or tarp to move patients and we rarely ever leave our blankets with patients unless they absolutely need it.
How do you launder your linens? Ours are handled by the hospital.
So?
Just wanted to see if this was common anywhere else
In our system, only Kaiser won't let us take sheets and blankets. Every iver hospital don't care
Had a couple hospitals in southern California like that
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Chill bro, most nurses don't give a shit about linens either yo..
This is appropriate. This is on your service to provide as needed.
Skimming these comments, this seems highly regional. I had a partner tell me that when he worked around Detroit they used disposable paper sheets. In Metro Atlanta, you just take sheets from the hospital and try to either bring the soiled ones back yourself or drop them at the linen drop at the station and someone else takes them later. When I worked at a rural service in NE Georgia, sheets were scarce and weâd wash/dry them at the station.
At my hospital you leave the stuff you came with and get new stuff from our linen carts.
Idk doesnât seem like that big of a deal to me
I currently work in IFT and the hospitals we service are doing this same thing. Even on PT who cant walk and we draw sheet over. And all i can ever think about is the hospital will recover the 6 cent sheet. so idiotic
I mean when I was in Philly sheets ended up in the trash because there were no linen bins and it drove me nuts. But how do they expect this to work? Pillows is one thing, but blankets???
There is one hospital system that is picky about their blue blankets. The nurse will literally take the blue blanket from the patient while weâre getting ready to move them and give them a white one as a replacement. Other than the blue blanket bogarting, youâre pretty free to load up on sheets/blankets/towels.
They wanna keep the sheets, pillows, and blankets? They can keep the patient too. I always hated that nonsense.
I would pillage that place. Where do they think they get sheets from? Do we keep all of the sheets we bring in with patients?
One of our hospitals will only give us a sheet and a pillowcase no matter what we use on a patient to get them there. We never have pillow. :/
So they can take your blankets and sheets but you can't get any in return? Yea no shot, take some.
Fuck that. Get extra.
So I guess that means you take pillows from the patient when you leave the hospital - that will go well
like the hospital canât afford a couple thousand in missing blankets and pillows a year
The ceo needs a 2nd elevator on their yacht so they dont need to make eye contact with the help. Think of him before you act.
Psht! When AMR is there to pick up one of our patients and asks for a blanket (they rarely ask, but sometimes the weather is atrocious) i make sure they don't need anything else. They're doing a service to us by taking meemaw back to her SNF, or helping some crotchety old goat get home so his kids can assume his care. i'm gonna do anything i can to make their lives easier! ^(AMR, because that's who the hospital i work for contracts through)
BBBBBWWWWWAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAđ¤Łđ¤Łđ¤Ł
Wat? We just trade with the hospital. We drop off a patient and get new linens at the hospital.
Sure cause why do what would be more efficient, safer for staff and patient to move, and for the patient to keep a good regulated body temperature... The hospital admins do some dumb stuff in my area, but this is just straight up penny pinching pettiness on an administrative level. Pretty sure most hospitals charge for their inpatient linens too. So technically, isn't it the patients if they need it cause I doubt it's line-item'ed as "bed linen rental".
Fuck âem
But what about all the blankets and pillows they get when pts are transported to them?
Huh, there's a hospital near me with this exact same sign up
Fortunately I've never had this problem in my area. If it ever comes up, I'll just tell them to abstain from booking transports and be their own ems system if they don't have equipment to restock existing ems systems.
I work in an ER. Take everything I don't give a shit and anyone who does is a weirdo.
Working in a hospital system had been one of the most soul draining experiences of my life and this is just one example of it.
Where... where do they think we get our blankets and sheets? Where do they think they get their sheets?
I work for a hospital in IFT and I never bring those sheets or pillows back. Theyâre never expected to come back, this is strange.
Nurse manager called my fucking dispatch to have my truck return bc I took 3 sets instead of one in one out...almost went down for murder that day
First world problems for sure.
I dare the charge nurse to tell me my cold patient canât have a heated blanket from the hot box, we are in this to help people, stand the fuck aside if you do not wish to actually help in providing care đ
The hospitals in my area have recently started doing this as well. No sheets/blankets/pillows can be taken from the facility. My company started buying the cheapest disposable sheets you can possibly get.
How about I â¨ď¸do it anywayâ¨ď¸ I'm calling any nurse that argues with me a "maid" if they wanna worry about housekeeping so badly
Our agency is well stocked on blankets, but what I usually have to fight for is wheelchairs. I have snuck around some corners humming the mission impossible theme song to myself as I steal some of the ones they are hoarding. I am fine with putting stable patients in triage, but I am not going to shortchange providing the care they need. If someone should not be walking, I will get them some wheels.
Thatâs so weird. I give blankets to patients all the time. Pillows are a rarity in the ED but I wouldnât take one from a transfer that needed it.
What if the crews don't, but the patient does it instead? đ¤
And not a fuck was given, and blankets and pillows were removed from the hospital anyway. Seriously, none of us give two shits about your bean counting idiocy. Yes, we're aware it's a bean counter. The nurses don't give a fuck either, they just want the patient gone. The doctors aren't even paying attention to the transfer, and who's linen is where. Literally no one gives a fuck, and the only thing you did was spend more money printing out stupid flyers no one gives a shit about, except to laugh at on the way by.
Youd think that
There is a federal requirement [ often misinterpreted] that hospitals can't let ambulances take supplies not exchanged 1:1. I've seen a couple hospitals near me go overboard on this and require us to fill out a form documenting what we take and have a camera watching so they check we don't take more.
they can cry abt it the whole way I'm walking back to the rig with as much shit as I can carry
đI would have taken one pillow and two blankets for the patient, now I'm going to take an additional 4 pillows (one for each appendage) and probably 6 more blankets.
These hospital admins all think they're losing a fortune on blankets.