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One of the most important jobs in a hospital, is the cleaner. To help prevent the spread of infections like MRSI, to help keep outbreaks of vomiting virus under
by askyourmother 10y ago
One of the most important jobs in a hospital, is the cleaner. To help prevent the spread of infections like MRSI, to help keep outbreaks of vomiting virus under control, and help reduce the number of admitted and post procedure patients dying as a direct result of infection acquired in the hospital itself.
And yet, they are treated as the lowest employees there, well, most are not even employees, outsourced three or four levels removed as a cost to be cut to the cheapest provider, damn the consequences.
Society has some warped views sometimes.
- monk_e_boy 10y agoDoctors are also important. And nurses. And the admin team. And the cleaners....
- askyourmother 10y agoI didn't say they weren't important. But, what a waste, when the doctor saves the life via an operation, the nurse administers care, and the patient dies from an infection acquired due to a dirty ward, when it could be so easily avoided, by respecting the important role of the cleaner, starting with actually making them employees, paying them well, proper training, materials and care, and finally, giving them respect, so they feel proud, as they save the life just as much as the doctor or the nurse.
- Tomte 10y agoWhat a waste, when a patient dies in a shining, clean ward because no doctor was there. ;-) But I agree, cleaners should be more respected.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoAnd now that we've stated both boundary conditions, we can have a productive discussion - is the pay allocation in a hospital arranged optimally in terms of lifes saved and if not, then how can we shift the arrangement (i.e. who should be paid more, and who less) to maximize the effectiveness of that hospital in saving lives?
- Chris2048 10y agoDoctors are harder to train, as such they are a rarer resource, and more expensive. We can freely pay cleaners less, and purchase more doctors. Isn't that how it works?
- TeMPOraL 10y agoYes, but hiring more doctors is counterproductive if their work is regularly being undone because of bad sanitation. In such a case, a dollar invested in cleaners buys a greater fraction of lives than same dollar invested in doctors.
- Chris2048 10y ago> a dollar invested in cleaners buys a greater fraction of lives than same dollar invested in doctors the dollar equation is relative, i.e. "in such a case". The balance point still ends up with doctors being payed more, and cleaners significantly less. Plus, who guarantees that dollar cleaning improvement? Maybe all you'll be doing is setting a precedent for higher pay - you need more to correlate with better cleaning. Maybe regular (independent) inspections & testing?
- lmm 10y agoDo you have any reason to believe it's suboptimal? It doesn't seem particularly implausible that the current allocation is close to optimal, and presumably hospital administrators and the like look at the numbers and allocate resources where they think they will most effectively lead to saved lives, no?
- joelrunyon 10y agoNot saying that isn't important, but at some point, the cleaning only takes a certain level of skill. Having a trashy ward - is much more likely a failure of the management / admin team in training & superversion than it is on the cleaner specifically. Not saying you should treat cleaners poorly, but it does explain the wage level.
- monk_e_boy 10y ago> Society has some warped views sometimes. At the moment, stopping to help a homeless person isn't worth anything. We should live in a society where helping someone in need makes you a millionaire. Where people are out hunting down the homeless, fighting to help them. A society where helping a kid to become happy makes you rich. Making a classroom of kids happy and teach them something at the same time earns you tens of millions a year.
- xlm1717 10y agoTalk about rose tinted glasses! You would need to invent some new product that did those things for kids and convince parents to buy it, otherwise no one will ever pay you millions to make kids happy and teach them something.
- monk_e_boy 10y agoThat's the point I was making. In a post money society (think reddit karma or Star Trek) this could be a thing. The money loving capitalist couldn't imagine being rewarded for helping someone. It makes me sad.
- gvurrdon 10y agoI suspect that the reason they are so low paid is because it is a job that can be done with the minimum of training, and so it is easy to find replacements.
- lez 10y agoexcept when there is a general shortage of workforce
- kom107 10y agoThey are valuable, except for the fact that machines can now do the disinfecting aspect of the job (the most important part) better and faster than they can. See: http://tru-d.com/ http://tru-d.com/ And to the point someone else made in this thread, they are easily replaced; not requiring a significant amount of training or onboarding resources.