I retired a couple of years ago after 47 years working at various jobs in my local NHS hospital.
"Every single piece of equipment was used once and thrown away, everything was wrapped in plastic."
Anything that has come into contact with a patient has to be cleaned, inspected, packed and sterilised before it can be used again. Some items made of plastic cannot be sterilised. Often it makes economic sense to throw away and buy new. When I worked in Pathology I worked out we could save over £10,000 a year by buying new glass and plastic specimen containers rather than hand cleaning, machine washing, re-capping and autoclaving them to sterilise them.
There is an awful lot that can be done to save money but often it is difficult to alter the mindset of people. We had a room with 5 medical secretaries who all had there own inkjet printer that had to regularly change the ink cartridge because all they used was blue for the NHS logo. We proposed one printer linked to all their PCs and again it would save money. The comment "what will it do to the carpet with us all having to walk to it!" Ignore the cost saving.
With the advent of sophisticated (american) health care computers we suggested giving every patient an itemised statement of what their treatment had cost to give people some idea of what this "free" service meant, in the hope that they would appreciate it more and understand where their money was being spent. The idea came to nothing.
"Every single piece of equipment was used once and thrown away, everything was wrapped in plastic."
Anything that has come into contact with a patient has to be cleaned, inspected, packed and sterilised before it can be used again. Some items made of plastic cannot be sterilised. Often it makes economic sense to throw away and buy new. When I worked in Pathology I worked out we could save over £10,000 a year by buying new glass and plastic specimen containers rather than hand cleaning, machine washing, re-capping and autoclaving them to sterilise them.
There is an awful lot that can be done to save money but often it is difficult to alter the mindset of people. We had a room with 5 medical secretaries who all had there own inkjet printer that had to regularly change the ink cartridge because all they used was blue for the NHS logo. We proposed one printer linked to all their PCs and again it would save money. The comment "what will it do to the carpet with us all having to walk to it!" Ignore the cost saving.
With the advent of sophisticated (american) health care computers we suggested giving every patient an itemised statement of what their treatment had cost to give people some idea of what this "free" service meant, in the hope that they would appreciate it more and understand where their money was being spent. The idea came to nothing.
