Linen 101: Teaching Your Staff How to Conserve Linens

While the first step in preventing linen loss is to work with a professional linen management service, educating your employees about linen management in your healthcare facility is an important second step.

Unfortunately, your staff is part of the linen loss problem. Common causes of linen loss include staff accidentally taking home scrubs or other linens, throwing out linens they think are too heavily damaged to be cleaned, or allowing linens to leave the facility during patient transfers or discharges. Although well-intentioned, these habits are costing you money.

The reality of the situation is that cracking down on these behaviors is going to be difficult. Every day on the job, your employee’s focus is to provide quality patient care. Making sure the parents don’t take the baby blanket home with the baby isn’t going to seem like a priority to your staff. As a result, new policies may appear unnecessary and overbearing.

Here are a few ways to effectively educate your staff about linen management in medical facilities:

1. Start with your managers.

To get everyone on board with new linen management policies, you have to start with the leaders. Meet with them to discuss how these policies are going to be implemented in each unit or department. Explain the purpose of the changes and get their feedback on the situation.

2. Hold mandatory linen awareness sessions.

Many of your staff might not even know that your medical facility has guidelines for using linens or even has a linen service provider. Take 20 minutes out of their day to educate them on the problem of linen loss and how it impacts the environment. Talk about the Joint Committee guidelines for linen use and infection control. Make sure to provide some incentive for attending the session.

3. Use signs and posters to remind employees of their training.

All the educational sessions in the world won’t make a difference if your employees don’t remember to toss that soiled sheet in the laundry bag instead of the trash can. Make sure that all of your receptacles are properly labeled and place educational reminders in or around key places like the linen cart, trash can and break room.

4. Provide incentives for employees that reduce their linen loss.

To get your employees enthusiastic about conserving their linen use, consider holding a contest between the departments or sections of your medical facility to see who can reduce their linen loss the most.

Learning Takes Time

Unfortunately, breaking your staff’s bad linen habits may take some time. They might still grab for that sheet to clean up a spill or accidentally wear their scrubs home. So, have some patience. It can take anywhere from 18 days to 8 months to form a new habit.

Hopefully, by implementing our suggestions and working with a reliable linen management company like HandCraft, you can reduce linen loss in your facility by educating your employees about linen management in your practice.