Time to Suit Up
Some people are used to guarding against contamination.
The COVID-19 restrictions just meant one more layer of protection for Rick Douglas, a member of the environmental services department at Butler Memorial Hospital.
Douglas said he fills a housekeeper one position at the hospital. As such, it brings Douglas into contact with some oozy and possibly infectious materials.
“I pick up trash and dirty linen and biohazard trash. I pick up at the chutes several times a day,” Douglas said. “I get rid of it.”
Douglas was already outfitted with gloves and a hat when he moves his cart between the four trash chutes he empties on the hospital's second floor near the emergency room and cafeteria.
Dirty linens go to the hospital laundry, regular garbage goes to the hospital trash compactor and biohazards, packed in bright yellow or red bags, are weighed, boxed, entered into a log and taken from the hospital by an outside contractor.
Douglas said biohazard waste is sterilized and incinerated.
With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, Douglas added a face mask to his ensemble and continued to go about making his trash pickups.
When the hospital went on lock down and canceled elective surgery, Douglas' work load got a bit lighter.
“The pandemic hasn't affected me too much. You pick it up and you take it down and get rid of it,” he said.
“It's cut into the trash produced,” he said of the recently relaxed hospital lock down. “More patients means more trash. Our loads were cut down a lot during that time. They are starting to pick up now.”
Douglas picks up dirty linen and trash from chutes on the second floor and hazardous waste from the third, fourth, fifth and sixth floors of the hospital.
“On a good day, if you stay on the ball, you should be able to pick up the chutes once an hour and keep the biohazard trash picked up,” Douglas said. “You want to leave it, so the afternoon guy is not buried.”
“I've got a routine I follow every day, the routes that work best for me,” he said.
He estimated he walks seven to nine miles each day, pushing the cart he loads with trash during his shift, which runs from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
But he considers himself more than just his housekeeper title. He thinks he's also an ambassador for the hospital.
Because he's often on the second floor, the location of the emergency room and the cafeteria, he often finds himself dealing with the public, explaining the hospital rules and directing visitors to their destinations.
If anyone knows the hospital, it's Douglas.
“I've been with the hospital for 43 years,” he said. “I started in the laundry in 1977. I did that for 11 and a half years. Then, I was a computer operator for 25 years. My job got eliminated there.
“I needed a job and took the job in housekeeping,” he said, adding he figures he will have to work another five or six years because of “the way Social Security and other stuff is going.”
