Our new bed to bag waste disposal scheme is being rolled out across the Trust - with positive feedback in the early stages.
The scheme, introduced to improve patient experience and help us be more efficient in our waste disposal, is around 90 per cent complete at CRH and well underway at HRI. It is likely to be complete in mid to late July.
The idea is that rather than treating patients at the bedside and then disposing of the waste, staff consider the patient’s infection status and the type of treatment they are about to administer BEFORE selecting the appropriate waste bag to take to the patient bedside.
Small infectious (orange) and offensive (tiger stripe) bags are available on dispensers around the wards. The bags are taken out of the patient bays immediately and straight to a larger bin for eventual disposal.
As part of the rollout, the wards and bay areas are also being cleared of excess bins, which could be noisy and often used incorrectly by patients and visitors. This also has an impact on the cost of waste disposal (it's really, REALLY expensive to dispose of infectious waste, so it's important we get it right).
In brief there are a number of advantages for both patients and our Trust:
- Improved patient experience – reduced noise and odour levels, uncluttered bed-spaces
- A standardised cross-site, user-friendly waste management system
- Also allows the future introduction of recycling bins that will be used for plastic, cardboard and dry paper
Rhona Walkden, Healthcare Assistant on Ward 4A at CRH (pictured) said that she was pleased with a new system that meant there were less bins and easier separation of the waste that was being produced.