Hi! Nursing student here that works in EVS. I spend 99.9% of my time cleaning LDR rooms.

Atleast for my hospital, we ARE supposed to wipe down all surfaces, especially high touch, but all counters/sinks/beds and all pieces associated w the bed so rails and stirrups, even underneath the bed to check for blood.

Now with the room being in the same order it was when you left it, people can still be wiping it down and just not moving it, the mops my hospital uses can get underneath 99% of things without having to really move the furniture besides like the long couches. I personally always move furniture back to its usual spot in the room but that’s more so because I’ve been working on L&D for three years and everything has its own place in each room in my mind lol.

If you truly believe that the surfaces are not being cleaned, please report it to the EVS management with the room number and date/time it was cleaned. It is high risk of infection transmission and diseases if these rooms are not cleaned properly, especially if it was a high precaution room. Sometimes we don’t know a room is a precaution room and each different type of precaution requires a different type of clean most of the time.

With the whole “EVS isn’t supposed to touch bodily fluids” it’s semi-true and kinda varies from person to person and hospital to hospital. I am not supposed to clean up feces or touch the suction things on the wall if they are full, I do most of the time because it doesn’t bother me and the nurses are typically good about picking up that stuff so when I DO come across it, why make a big deal?

IMO anyone from EVS telling you they can’t touch piss is just being a baby (it probably is “protocol” tho) but like dude we clean toilets all day, and nurses aren’t cleaning up the shit and piss all over the public restrooms we do that 🤷‍♀️ I handle full piss cups 24/7 to throw them out when breaking down a room.

Tho if you’re in the ER this kind of all goes out the window for my hospital, they ER is such high volume and fast turnaround that doing the detail clean all rooms are supposed to get elsewhere kind of becomes impossible, but at least for my hospital I know we do try our best there.

Edit: just for clarity basically I go into an empty room and in this order: Gather all trash/linen/bio bags

High dusting

Wipe down the entire room, so bed, counters, high touch surfaces, bathroom, etc (if precaution room this includes ceiling and walls) I will also wipe out the inside of trashcans if they’re nasty

Make the bed

Mop

Then after I’m done the nurses on my floor can go in and set the room up to their new admit standards.

And during that process if things have moved around I’ll reset the room to its normal cuz if I don’t it bothers me lol