CMM spoke with Leland Bonaparte, a hospital division manager at the Naval Medical Center in San Diego with 20 years of environmental services (EVS) experience, about the challenges of maintaining restrooms during peak hospital operational hours.
How many restrooms are you in charge of maintaining? Which are the most difficult to keep clean?
Leland Bonaparte: We have 1,900 restrooms in the hospital to maintain. The two most difficult restrooms are in the pharmacy and the gym locker rooms, which are both extremely high-traffic areas. Guests are constantly interrupting the EVS techs as they are trying to service these restrooms.
What are your facility’s biggest restroom challenges?
Bonaparte: Our biggest challenges are keeping the customers out of the restrooms while we service them and making sure the restrooms are stocked properly.
How do you overcome these challenges?
Bonaparte: We have set specific times to clean the restrooms, so guests know when to avoid certain restrooms and visit others. We also have employees clean the restrooms for their specific gender so a bit of overlap between guest visits and restroom servicing doesn’t affect guest comfort and privacy. To keep on top of stocking, we do steadfast restroom policing, which entails daily repetitive checking to make sure we have enough toilet paper and paper towels and that the restrooms meet our quality assurance standards during operational hours.
Do you use automatic or smart dispensers in the restrooms?
Bonaparte: We use automatic soap and paper towel dispensers because that is the best way for our restroom guests to practice good hand hygiene without spreading germs. Currently, we are not using any smart dispensers or innovative technology to alert custodians of restroom shortages. But this is something that we are looking into, and we recently tried some of these systems.
What advice would you give to EVS leaders on keeping up with restroom maintenance?
Bonaparte: The most important thing is to ensure that custodians are properly trained. Custodians also need to realize that the policing of restrooms is just as important as cleaning them. We have gotten more complaints about the restrooms not being stocked than not being clean.
