Healthcare Cleaning Staff - Patient Communication (Research, Video 6:17)

Whenever I hear an employee say, “I’m just the _________________( a job title that they clearly don’t see as too important in the fulfillment of a company mission ), I know that the leadership should begin working on making inclusive changes to end this kind of thinking. Often, even other staff workers think that colleagues at a certain level, such as the cleaning staff, have no real connection with operational success. It’s little wonder that cleaning staff members may assume their contributions are not too important if they are never recognized.

A former school principal, I always emphasized the significance of every employee’s contribution to the success of our school. Instead of celebrating Secretary’s Day, Boss’s Day, or Teacher Appreciation Week, our entire school celebrated Staff Appreciation Week and included all staff, including custodial staff, aides, cafeteria workers, volunteers, and even the street crossing guard and our regular mailperson. A few “higher level” employees were somewhat uncomfortable with this concept when I first presented it to the staff. But they eventually came to understand as our school improved that we were all valued links in a strong chain in which everybody’s contribution mattered.

Healthcare organizations can also benefit from such a culture. In this post, research focuses on the hospital cleaning staff experiences “tidying rooms and tending hearts with seriously ill and dying patients.” Perhaps you have had such an experience yourself when you were hospitalized. While cleaning staff communication is seldom recognized, many opportunities are presented in hospitals and long-term care facilities where cleaning staff members, not only interact with very ill patients, but also cope at personal levels with their dying and deaths.

This research included cleaning staff participants in interviews and in focus group discussions. They described interactions with patients as an important and fulfilling aspect of their work. About half of participants indicated that patients talked with them every day on average for one to three minutes. While conversations included casual topics such as weather and family, patients also discussed their illnesses and thoughts regarding death. When patients addressed illness and death, cleaning staff members said they often felt uncomfortable and helpless. More training on how to handle these sensitive discussions would be helpful for them in supporting patients when patients want to speak openly with them about illness and death.

This wonderful video titled “I am Essential” focuses on staff members of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital Support Services and emphasizes that all members are truly essential to hospital operations, not just cleaning rooms. They have stories about supporting patients in important ways as part of a team with a common mission. They are often the eyes and ears that can add significant information about what goes on in the total environment. Every job has a component above a basic job description. All staff members are essential and should be praised for their input as team members serving with a common mission.

Frances Shani Parker, Author

Becoming Dead Right: A Hospice Volunteer in Urban Nursing Homes is available in paperback and e-book editions in America and other countries at online and offline booksellers.
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