Every day, more than three tonnes of linen, including clean and dirty sheets, towels, blankets, scrubs and gowns, are delivered to and collected from wards and theatres across Mackay Base Hospital.
A thorough and efficient laundry process is vital to prevention and containment of hospital infection, but also contributes to the delivery of care.
This week we celebrate Operational Services Recognition Week (7 to 11 October), acknowledging the important work done by operational staff across the Mackay HHS.
Sharon Shakespeare has been part of the linen services team for 22 years; they work seven days a week to provide daily hospital linen and laundering services for the 318-bed hospital.
Her day begins at 6am with the packing of trolleys and delivery of clean linen, while her colleagues collect bagged dirty linen from wards and begin the process of sorting, washing, drying, ironing and folding.
“Every day about 16 or 17 trolleys of clean linen are delivered to the wards, each with about 100kg of linen in each,” Sharon said.
“One trolley can contain about 60 sheets, 60 blankets and 60 towels, whatever the requirements of each ward are, and there’s also often scrubs worn by our theatre teams and gowns by the patients.”
“They are very heavy so we use the tugs to pull the trolleys, but there’s still a lot of walking, pushing and pulling involved in both the delivery and collection of linen.”
After foul linen from the wards is collected and brought to the ‘dirty’ side of the laundry, the tubs are loaded onto a conveyor where the linen is sorted by six people with gloved hands; heavily soiled items and infectious bags are separated as well as scrubs and theatre linen, all to be washed separately.
Once sorted, the linen is placed into 50kg batch loaders and onto a conveyor belt for a trip to the washing machine where it is thoroughly cleaned.
An automated stacker lifts the clean laundry into the dryers. After drying it is folded by a machine, stacked onto trolleys and taken to the storeroom ready for delivery.
“The blankets are all fully dried and the sheets are pinned on the folding machine while still damp where they are stretched, ironed dry and folded; it is all done in just a couple of minutes,” Sharon said.
The linen was sanitized according to the highest standards to ensure the best possible healing environment for every patient.
Technology in the laundry was an absolute blessing – it had made the work a lot easier, faster and much more efficient, Sharon said.
“There’s a lot less manual handling nowadays but teamwork is still really very important in the laundry,” she said.
“We all do a variety of duties every day which keeps it interesting and you don’t do the same job for longer than one hour.
“I enjoy it all and I’m pretty good at it all including washing, packing, delivery, collecting and processing.”
The process-driven environment and quick turnaround times were very satisfying, she said.
There were many long-term staff in the laundry and Sharon said she really enjoyed the team camaraderie as well as training new staff, sharing both her knowledge and experience.
“It’s a great team who work very well together and quite satisfying to know that our work is helping our staff care for our patients and also making their stay in hospital more comfortable,” she said.
