Two Jamestown Regional Medical Center employees received certification in cleaning and disinfection, waste handling, floor care and linen handling.
JRMC Environmental Service Technicians, Elaine Kuske and Adrianne Oster, received their accreditation for Certified Health Care Environmental Service Technical (CHEST). CHEST works to make a positive impact on infection rates, cost, quality of care, patient experience and outcomes. The CHEST Certification is through the Association for Health Care Environment (AHE) which is a part of the American Hospital Association (AHA).
The CHEST Program offers this new certification for Environmental Services frontline workers. This program covers all aspects of a frontline workers typical tasks and accountabilities. They play an essential role in patients’ experience of care, as well as ensuring patient safety and satisfaction. They seek to create a clean and quiet healing atmosphere that will lead to improved patient outcomes. To achieve these quality outcomes, Certified Health Care Environmental Service Technicians must be well – trained and demonstrate competence in a number of key areas.
“Linen and environmental services are vital to a patient’s success. A clean room and facility means our patients can focus on healing,” said Dane Grebel, Support Services & Emergency Preparedness manager.
Linen and environmental service technicians play an essential role in patients’ experience of care as well as ensuring patient safety and satisfaction.
Kuske and Oster completed 24 hours of CHEST classes with their trainers who are certified as T-CHEST through AHE. They took a 50-question test and passed in order to earn their accreditation, with future education to maintain the certification.
“Our environmental services team is one of the reasons JRMC remains a destination for care in the state,” said JRMC President & CEO Mike Delfs. “At all times and especially during a pandemic, clean rooms and linens are critical to achieving the best patient outcome. Award-winning care doesn’t happen by accident. It’s because of the hard work and dedication of Kuske, Oster and our entire team that we can continue to offer legendary care to this community.”