Despite having more than 400 injury-free days to their credit, the members of the EVS unit-based team at Sunnybrook Medical Office decided that what they were doing wasn’t good enough.

Wanting to ensure that their workplace was as safe as possible, they turned their attention to prevention instead of reaction.

When staff members started talking about a possible problem with the way trash and linen were being disposed in the building’s ambulatory surgery unit, the unit-based team decided to take a look. They decided to turn to regional Environmental Health and Safety for advice to help workers be safe and efficient. Here’s what they found.

A problem with co-mingling

EVS housekeepers are used to handling soiled linen and trash. Part of their job is to collect the waste and take it to the loading dock for disposal. However, instead of the linen and waste being in separate bins, they were finding the bags mixed together in one bin.

This created a number of hazards:

• Heavy lifting. Piling the bags together in the same bin made the bins very heavy, posing a lifting hazard. The maximum weight for lifting, according to the regional standard, is 14 pounds, and many of the bins exceeded that by 10 pounds or more. “When the unit-based team collected baseline data on this project, they found the bins weighed between 27 and 35 pounds,” according to Leonard Hayes, EVS supervisor.

• Risk of exposure. Staff members were at risk of being exposed to soiled linen if a bag came open during transport or during the sorting process. In one case, a needle was accidentally discarded in the waste bin, which was resting directly under the sharps disposal container. When the needle wasn’t placed in the sharps container properly, it wound up in the trash instead.

• Extra work. Since the trash was headed to the compactor and the linens for cleaning, the bags had to be sorted. That meant that much more lifting, and that much more time—time to sort and time to move the linens to the linen cart. In addition, staff had to go into the OR area six or seven times to empty full carts.

Fresh eye spots the fix

Chris Courtnier, regional coordinator with Environmental Health and Safety, walked through the entire process with EVS housekeeper, Julie Morris. His fresh eye on the situation helped form a solution.

“By separating the linen from the waste at the point of generation,” Courtnier suggested, “additional handling will be eliminated and reduce exposure to lifting injuries to EVS staff.”

Efficiencies emerge

With the linen and trash separated at the start, it takes twice as long for the bins to fill—so now they need to be emptied only half as often. Other efficiencies emerged, too. Since the linen carts are designed to facilitate transport for cleaning, they don’t require any extra handling once they’re full—they can be rolled directly to the dock for transport. And the waste bags are collected in bins that are designed to be operated by a mechanical lifting system, which places the waste directly into the compactor.

Sometimes it takes a village to make things better. Not only did Environmental Health and Safety play a role in this solution, so did Infection Control, facility Safety Committee co-leads, and even the sponsor of the EVS team, Lori Quiroz, regional manager of environmental services.

“The team approach was evident in ensuring the right group of experts were brought in to reduce the potential for injury while serving our members,” says Courtnier.

Success is everyone’s business

Understanding the risks and educating staff on awareness was part of the solution to this problem. But this involved more than just the EVS staff—it also had an impact on staff in the OR.

OR technicians were responsible for bagging the refuse and linens after a surgery and putting it in the bins. They were now being asked to change how they did things, so that the linen wound up in the rolling cart and the waste got disposed of in the bin.

“Having the support from our sponsor, regional EH&S, the OR team, and the staff has made this project a success,” said housekeeper Sheri Pang, SEIU Local 49, the UBT’s labor co-lead.

Successful practice to share

Glitches are still being worked out through the teams as they fine-tune this process.

“Change is never easy,” says Julie Morris, EVS day lead, SEIU Local 49, “but it feels good when it works.”

“This process has improved our safety and enabled us to take a learning and use it to help other clinics,” said Hayes. “We’re going to take this model and roll it out as a best practice to other buildings."