Falling through the cracks: the invisible hospital cleaning workforce.
Ancillary staff
Cleaner
Habermas
Hospital cleaner
Patient safety
Teamwork
Journal
Journal of health organization and management
ISSN: 1758-7247
Titre abrégé: J Health Organ Manag
Pays: England
ID NLM: 101179473
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
19 Sep 2022
19 Sep 2022
Historique:
entrez:
18
9
2022
pubmed:
19
9
2022
medline:
21
9
2022
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
This paper explores the role of hospital cleaners and their contribution to healthcare safety. Few studies have examined the activities and input of hospital cleaners, rendering them largely invisible in healthcare research. Yet, as coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has demonstrated, this sizeable workforce carries out tasks critical to healthcare facilities and wider health system functioning. Drawing on the work of Habermas, the authors examine the literature surrounding cleaners and quality and safety in healthcare. The authors theorise cleaners' work as both instrumental and communicative and examine the perceptions of healthcare professionals and managers, as well as cleaners themselves, of healthcare professionals and managers' role and contribution to quality and safety. Cleaners are generally perceived by the literature as performing repetitive - albeit important - tasks in isolation from patients. Cleaners are not considered part of the "healthcare team" and are excluded from decision-making and interprofessional communication. Yet, cleaners can contribute to patient care; ubiquity and proximity of cleaners to patients offer insights and untapped potential for involvement in hospital safety. This paper brings an overdue focus to this labour force by examining the nature and potential of their work. This paper offers a new application of Habermas' work to this domain, rendering visible how the framing of cleaners' role works to exclude this important workforce from participation in the patient safety agenda.
Identifiants
pubmed: 36116792
doi: 10.1108/JHOM-02-2022-0035
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Informations de copyright
© Emerald Publishing Limited.
Références
Armstrong, P., Armstrong, H. and Scott-Dixon, K. (2008), Critical to Care: The Invisible Women in Health Services, University of Toronto Press, Toronto.
Ashton, C. and Manthorpe, J. (2019), “The views of domestic staff and porters when supporting patients with dementia in the acute hospital: an exploratory qualitative study”, Dementia, Vol. 18, pp. 1128-1145.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2015), Admitted Patient Care 2013-14: Australian Hospital Statistics, Australian Government, Canberra.
Baxter, R., Taylor, N., Kellar, I. and Lawton, R. (2019), “A qualitative positive deviance study to explore exceptionally safe care on medical wards for older people”, BMJ Quality and Safety, Vol. 28, pp. 618-626.
Cross, S., Gon, G., Morrison, E., Afsana, K., Ali, S.M., Manjang, T., Manneh, L., Rahman, A., Saxena, D., Vora, K. and Graham, W.J. (2019), “An invisible workforce: the neglected role of cleaners in patient safety on maternity units”, Glob Health Action, Vol. 12 No. 1, p. 1480085, doi: 10.1080/16549716.2018.1480085.
Davies, S. (2010), “Fragmented management, hospital contract cleaning and infection control”, Policy and Politics, Vol. 38, pp. 445-463.
Dinius, J., Philipp, R., Ernstmann, N., Heier, L., Göritz, A.S., Pfisterer-Heise, S., Hammerschmidt, J., Bergelt, C., Hammer, A. and Körner, M. (2020), “Inter-professional teamwork and its association with patient safety in German hospitals—a cross sectional study”, Plos One, Vol. 15, p. e0233766.
Elkomy, S., Cookson, G. and Jones, S. (2019), “Cheap and dirty: the effect of contracting out cleaning on efficiency and effectiveness”, Public Administration Review, Vol. 79, pp. 193-202.
Francis, R. (2013), Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry: Executive Summary, The Stationery Office, London.
Habermas, J. (1984), Theory of Communicative Action. Volume 1, Reason and the Rationlization of Scoiety, Beacon Press, Boston, MA, translated by Thomas A. McCarthy.
Habermas, J. (1987), Heory of Communicative Action. Volume 2, Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason, translated by Thomas A. McCarthy, Beacon Press, Boston, MA.
Hignett, S., Sands, G. and Griffiths, P. (2013), “In-patient falls: what can we learn from incident reports?”, Age and Ageing, Vol. 42, pp. 527-531.
Jors, K., Tietgen, S., Xander, C., Momm, F. and Becker, G. (2017), “Tidying rooms and tending hearts: an explorative, mixed-methods study of hospital cleaning staff's experiences with seriously ill and dying patients”, Palliative Medicine, Vol. 31, pp. 63-71.
Kahnamoui, N. (2005), After Outsourcing: Working Collaboratively to Deliver Patient Care?, Masters thesis, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.
Lanoix, M. (2011), “Assembly-line care: ancillary care work in post-Fordist economies”, Work, Vol. 40, pp. 41-50.
Messing, K. (1998), “Hospital trash: cleaners speak of their role in disease prevention”, Medical Anthropology Quarterly, Vol. 12, pp. 168-187.
Meyer, J., Nippak, P. and Cumming, A. (2020), “An evaluation of cleaning practices at a teaching hospital”, American Journal of Infection Control, Vol. 49, pp. 1-4.
Otter, J.A. (2019), “Can cleaning REACH further in reducing hospital infections?”, The Lancet Infectious Diseases, Vol. 19, pp. 345-347.
Parkin, P. (2009), Managing Change in Healthcare: Using Action Research, Sage, Los Angeles, CA.
Pearce, C., Phillips, C., Hall, S., Sibbald, B., Porritt, J., Yates, R., Dwan, K. and Kljakovic, M. (2009), “Contributions from the lifeworld: quality, caring and the general practice nurse”, Quality in Primary Care, Vol. 17, pp. 5-13.
Princeton, D. (2015), “The critical theoretical perspectives and the healthcare system”, Review of Arts and Humanities, Vol. 4, pp. 71-79.
Research Committee of the Society of Healthcare Epidemiology of America (2010), “Enhancing patient safety by reducing healthcare-associated infections: the role of discovery and dissemination”, Journal of Infection Control Hospital Epidemiology, Vol. 31, pp. 118-123.
Stinson, J., Pollak, N. and Cohen, M. (2005), The Pains of Privatization: How Contracting Out Health Supports Workers, Their Families, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, Vancouver.
Twigg, J. (2000), Bathing—the Body and Community Care, Routledge, London.
Wrzesniewski, A., Dutton, J.E. and Debebe, G. (2003), “Interpersonal sensemaking and the meaning of work”, Research in Organizational Behavior, Vol. 25, pp. 93-135.
Wrzesniewski, A., LoBuglio, N., Dutton, J.E. and Berg, J.M. (2013), “Job crafting and cultivating positive meaning and identity in work”, in Bakker, A.B. (Ed.), Advances in Positive Organizational Psychology, Emerald Group, Bingley, pp. 281-302.
Zuberi, D. (2013), Cleaning up: How Hospital Outsourcing Is Hurting Workers and Endangering Patients, Cornell University Press, New York, NY.