Introduction
In the contemporary world, situations when some workers are forced to fulfill functions, which are not their direct responsibilities, are a widespread issue. In the nursing work environment, there are tasks that many nurses have to do, despite the fact that other, less-paid employees should do them. This paper will examine the functions such as hospital premises and toilets cleaning, which initially are not a responsibility of nurses, and another staff is to fulfill them.
The Functions that Should be Done by Other Employees
It is common when medical staff assists domestic workers despite having many other, more urgent, and vital tasks. However, nurses’ direct responsibilities are collaborating with cleaning and housekeeping workers, auditing the process of sanitizing the premises, and developing the decontamination policies (Otter & Galletly, 2018). Even though nurses are not obligated to fulfill cleaning duties, they often have to. The situation is even worse when domestic staff is not hired, and nurses are obligated to ensure that the hospital is safe and clean, which makes it complicated to provide high-quality care (Otter & Galletly, 2018). Therefore, it should be considered that cleaning tasks that are often attributed to nurses are not a part of their direct responsibilities, and those should be less-paid employees’ duties.
Conclusion
I do not state that nurses are better than, for instance, domestic staff and should never be engaged in hospital premises cleaning. However, I believe that is not a part of their responsibilities, and less-paid workers shall do tasks such as toilets cleaning and floors mopping. In the event any hospital has a policy not to hire additional domestic staff but rather force nurses to fulfill the extra functions, this medical facility shall change its approach toward the issue.
Reference
Otter, J. & Galletly, T. (2018). Environmental decontamination 2: the role of the nurse. Web.