Quality by Choice

Introduction: I am an experienced intensive care unit (ICU) hospital housekeeper with 7 years' experience at the Fayetteville, AR, VA Medical Center. As a team member who desires to excel, I am self motivated, responsible, reliable, and proactive. While truly appreciating those people who make a difference at our facility, I do my part by using each day as an opportunity to have a great day and instill in others the knowledge that they can do the same. The daily routine of dusting, mopping, cleaning toilets, emptying trash while simple has been made quick and easy with the checklist I developed. The terminal room cleaning checklist makes the routine cleaning of contact precaution and special contact precaution rooms (developed with the advanced clinic access/system redesign committee) faster to turn around for the next patient. Keeping busy with deep cleaning and emptying laundry in ICU, outpatient surgery and endoscopy 1 and 2 makes the work more enjoyable. This is accomplished without supervision. I manage the overall cleanliness and pass inspections with minimal findings of needed improvements by following the proper procedures. I find other activities to perform when I am not busy, such as deep cleaning bedside tables, beds, walls and waxing floors. My quality of work is acknowledged by visitors who say, this is the cleanest hospital they have seen. Through infection and quality control measures, I maintain the cleanliness of the ICU, recovery area, break room, staff restroom, soiled utility room, etc. using Virex, Alpha-HP and Glance to clean and disinfect all areas. In patient rooms, Micro-Fiber mops are used to cut down on the cross-contamination. Patient rooms are decontaminated after they leave following the standards of cleanliness in our Environmental Services Procedure Guidelines.