Kaitlyn Taylor

FONU 427

Mallori Ruffolo

3 June 2019

Safety Report

After a recent visit from JCAHO, they discovered a patient safety and infection control

issue within the hospital. They found that some of the patient refrigerators on the floors were

being used for other food items that were not patient related. They also were not labeled

properly to show that they were for patient use only. Not only that, some of the logs that were

already used to take temperatures in the refrigerators and freezers were not in a sleeve so they

could be easily destroyed or lost. Logs were also used yearly so they wanted to change that to

monthly.

Although this was a hospital wide issue and our department doesn’t necessarily watch or

maintain those refrigerators, it still sort of fell to food and nutrition to fix the issue. So, we

stepped up and came up with an intervention to solve the issue and went around to educate

nurses and management on the new solution in order to provide better and safer patient care.

Our first job was to go around to all the floors and replace the logs with a newer, updated

one and put them in a sleeve to protect them. One major detail about the logs that was different

was that the old log was used for an entire year, whereas the new logs had to be changed

monthly. They also combined the freezer and fridge to be on one sheet to make it easier and

more convenient for employees taking temperatures. While there, we also had to stick

laminated signs on all the refrigerators that said “Patient Use Only” to indicate that they should

only be used for patient food and drink items. While attaching the new stickers and logs, we also

had to educate the charge nurses or techs who take the temperatures on the new logs. After

placing new logs and verifying thermometers, we had to create a log for each refrigerator

confirming all of this information (see other document).

 Joint commission was expected to return a week later and while they most likely weren’t

coming back to the kitchen, we wanted to double check that they patient refrigerator logs were

being filled out correctly throughout the hospital in case JCAHO visited a floor and checked any

refrigerators. When we visited the floors to check them, it seemed like for the most part it was

being done correctly, but two floors in particular didn’t have new ones printed for June and still

were not storing things properly. The same charge nurse runs both floors so it was brought to

his attention to fix and follow up with.

One major lesson I learned from this was that although this issue wasn’t directly affected

to the food and nutrition department, it is still important that we show initiative and step up to

show that we care about the hospital as a whole and not just our own department.