Frontline workers to benefit from new back of house

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Improved storage facilities and a new loading dock are in store for Nepean Hospital’s back of house (BOH) services under Stage 2 of the Nepean Redevelopment.

Nepean Hospital’s BOH services or ‘general services’ encompasses the services that are required to keep the hospital running smoothly behind the scenes, and includes the receiving and distribution of supplies, linen, cleaning services and waste management.

Nepean Hospital’s General Services Manager Dru Greig, who oversees a workforce of almost 300 staff, says the new BOH areas will streamline important processes and ultimately improve the working conditions of Nepean Hospital’s frontline workers. 
“The new dock will allow us to receive three trucks at the onetime which will increase our capacity to move items quickly,” he said. “At the moment we can only receive one truck at a time, so it takes longer to unload items like medical goods onto the dock and then distribute them throughout the hospital.  

“This in turn will benefit frontline staff and patients. For example, when a truck is delivering surgical kits that are required for a particular surgery, we’ll be able to receive and distribute it right away, rather than having to unload another truck first to make way for the truck with the surgical kits.  

Larger storage facilities will also be provided for the BOH teams. 

“At the moment we have minimal storage areas, which has a flow on effect to hospital services,” he said.  

“More storage means we will be quicker in servicing the hospital; instead of spending time juggling where items can be stored, we will be able to find items easily and get them to the service that requires them. Overall it will streamline the hospital’s supply and distribution chain. 

“Having the facilities to store supplies means we won’t have as many trucks in the loading dock area because we’ll have the facilities to store the supplies. This will help reduce pedestrian activity around the dock which is important from a safety perspective. 

“We’ll also have a dedicated space for our linen team to receive and store clean linen and dispose of soiled linen which will alleviate any infection control issues and ensure we continue to meet the Australian cleanliness and infection standards.  

“Having a dedicated area for linen means our team can clean and strip beds a lot quicker, so less time patients need to wait for a clean bed.” 

Dru says the new area will provide opportunities for general services to adopt new waste management processes and initiatives. 

“At the moment, we don’t have the facilities or space to segregate the hospital’s waste into different streams,” he said.

“A lot of good ideas are put forward by our waste and sustainability committee that we currently can’t implement, so we are really looking forward to having a larger footprint so we can implement recycling processes, like separating out our soft plastics, to reduce Nepean Hospital’s waste."

Image 1: From left: Ian Melvin, Supervisor Supply and Dru Greig, Manager, General Services

Image 2: From left: Gary Bradford, Supply Officer; Matthew Kriss, Linen Supply Officer and Ricky Truano, Supply Officer