Do you change sheets?

[JPINFV]

When it came to the company linen, we only had one blanket and it was only to be used over the disposable sheets. That said, a few quick comments. If a patient coming from a facility needed a blanket, we used the facility blanket (I've always taken linen as something that works out to be near zero sum), in general blankets aren't needed most of the time in So. Cal, and we never dilly dallied around outside anyways.

[Scaramedic]

Do I change the sheets?

Never, I'm married why would I ever change the sheets I...Oh wait. At work? Oh yeah definitely.

And on that note Scaramedic is running back into oblivion.

[pa_micp]

i have a sheet on the cot. ok fine. i also before placing a pt on the cot open up a bath blanket or a sheet or even a heavy blanket. this 1. allows the pt to keep somewhat of bodily dust to themself, with in limits. 2 allows for easier transfer (still using gloves) and althoughn i have a carry / cover sheet i still strip the bed for the minor possibility of cross contamination just idiosyncracies.

flipping the sheet.....gross but dangerous and lazy.

should be written up, if he / she is doing this what about pt care??? not something i wanna put trust into.........would you? could you?

[PCP]

I can only speak for myself when I say that I change the sheets, pillow case, and towel after every call. I feel that my patients deserve to have clean sheets. I always make up a new blanket wrap as well. I will even go as far as getting a warm blanket out of the oven at the hospital for my patient, especially if they are an elderly patient or a child.

[JPINFV]

Towel? What's that for besides being a hoopy frood?

[brentoli]

Towel? What's that for besides being a hoopy frood?

We throw two on our cot. One at the head laid out so we can wrap a patients head when its cold/rainy. The second paired up with the blanket... for any.... towlish needs.

[hatelilpeepees]

I might be reading you wrong but you sound really shocked at the notion that many of us change not only the sheets after every patient but that we might carry blankets enough that we don't have to reuse them.  Am I just misunderstanding you?

In all my time in EMS I have never reused sheets or blankets.  When the patient is dropped off at the ER the stretcher is stripped with sheets and blankets dropped into the laundry.  It is then wiped down from top to bottom and new sheets and blankets are set up.

Like ERDoc, almost every place I've worked has had some sort of requirement, either State or service mandated, that we have a certain number of linens and blankets on board.  Nitpicky?  Perhaps.  But it seems, as evidenced by the OP, that perhaps there's a good reason those rules are in place.

No you are not reading wrong, I am shocked that there are people who carry 10 blankets on an ambulance. I've always either had 1-2 stolen from the ER when on 911 truck (one provider did buy 1 wool blanket for each truck, that we sent in for laundering once it became soiled). Most of the privates either made you steal from the floor during IFTs, or they had some made up with their name on it (like funeral home) that you kept. I always put a sheet over them first to act as a barrier for the blanket, but we have always had "shared community blankets".

[nypamedic43]

We put a towel over the pillow, so we can cover the patients head on rainy or snowy days. I also keep an extra towel on the bench for the ocassional blood letting ceremony lol

[Just Plain Ruff]

Why the big deal over swapping linen. You bring a patient into the ER with a bottom sheet, a top sheet and a blanket and pillowcase.

You are giving the hospital everything but probably the pillowcase so why not just exchange one for the other.

The hospital still gets a full set of dirty linens(usually not dirty at all) and you get a fresh clean set.

Win win situation.

I don't see why this is an issue.

If it is, then maybe your management should discuss with the hospital that doesn't allow you to exchange linens a linen exchange program.

The services I've worked at we just exchange like for like. But we do have a supply of sheets, pillowcases and blankets under the bench seat.

[DFIB]

In the third world we don’t have the luxury of sheets for the ambulance, (you know with socialized medicine) . We transport our patients on the mat and wipe it down after every patient.

In the USA (with non socialized medicine) we would exchange our soiled sheet at the hospital for a clean one. Also there is a towel to go under the head. The ambulance carried 5 clean sheets, towels and 2 blankets. Stretcher gets cleaned after every patient.

As far as the sheet flip, if it really bothered me I would mention it to the offender but wouldn’t consider going beyond there. Even that is debatable because I might end up working with him someday. It is likely he will not have fond memories of the day a new student was critical of his work. Like another poster already said, we can make our EMS work environment very inhospitable over small things.