Do you change sheets?

[nypamedic43]

We carry 4 extra bath blankets and 2 extra heavy blankets plus what's on the stretcher. Patients don't share any linens.

[ERDoc]

Not to go off topic or nitpick, but NYS hasn't required MAST since the mid 90s.

[Kaisu]

AZ still requires MAST

As for the linens.. never reused them.... never have.. never will. This includes pillows, pillow cases, blankets and the gurney sheet. The gurney is disinfected after EACH patient with special attention to rails, buckles and straps. Anything less is irresponsible and unacceptable.

[JakeEMTP]

We use the hospital linens. Exchanged with EVERY pt. contact. The stretcher is wiped down with a cavi wipe then new linens placed onto the stretcher. I would consider it extremely bad form to reuse linens. I never have and honestly can't remember even considering it. if it was this crews last sheet, then that is bad planning on their part. Just because they can't manage to pull of this simplest of duties (ensuring they have enough linens), doesn't allow them to possibly expose the next pt. to infection of some sort.

As for blankets, we carry some extra ones with us. Of course you could just turn off the AC in the back of the truck. If the pt. is cold, turn off the AC. It is for their comfort, not yours (again, generic you).

As an aside, I do hate it when the stretcher fetchers come in and grab arm loads of linens though. They are a for profit company. Therefore should be supplying their own linens. The hospital provides them for EMS and the Critical care folks. It is a costly venture but one they deem important.

[JPINFV]

As an aside, I do hate it when the stretcher fetchers come in and grab arm loads of linens though. They are a for profit company. Therefore should be supplying their own linens. The hospital provides them for EMS and the Critical care folks. It is a costly venture but one they deem important.

Is this under contract that the hospital will supply you with linens, or is it a case where the staff simply doesn't say anything? Similarly, how often are linens circulated from facility to facility? After all, the patient who goes from nursing home to the hospital with facility sheets isn't going to go from the hospital to the facility with the original set of sheets.

[JakeEMTP]

Is this under contract that the hospital will supply you with linens, or is it a case where the staff simply doesn't say anything? Similarly, how often are linens circulated from facility to facility? After all, the patient who goes from nursing home to the hospital with facility sheets isn't going to go from the hospital to the facility with the original set of sheets.

There is a portable shelf in the EMS room with linens wrapped in some sort of protective plastic (think shrink wrap). The are supposed to be for EMS so, in an ideal world they make their way back to the hospital to be either laundered or disposed of. I don't know what they do with the nursing home linens to be honest. I do know though that the sheets that were on our stretcher are back at the hospital.

When they go back to the nursing home, I can only assume that they are on new sheets which were on the hospitals exam stretcher.

[paramedicmike]

What about blankets? Do u carry enough for each patient or do patients share

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.

[HERBIE1]

When I worked on the privates- 25+ years ago, we would use hospital sheets and change them on every call. BUT- in the winter time, about a year before I left, our company purchased what were essentially sleeping bags for winter use. We obviously would wrap the patient in a sheet and usually bath or chain blankets before we put them in these "sleeping bags" but it always grossed me out thinking about reusing those things. As a result, I rarely used it myself. If we had a patient with hygiene and/or fluids/emesis/blood, we would simply use regular blankets and forgo the bag, but still- yuck. The company would impose discipline if we were caught NOT using the bags, but I didn't care.

Now- yes, sheets are changed on every call- unless of course they only sit on the squad bench for a "taxi ride".

[Chief1C]

I make up the stretcher, as if I'm going to be the next person laying on it. Whatever we use, we replace, and wipe the mattress, straps and rails off after every patient.

[brentoli]

Now- yes, sheets are changed on every call- unless of course they only sit on the squad bench for a "taxi ride".

I still change them. 1) Habit. 2) Just like a hotel, you could rent a room just to take a shower and never touch the bed, but those linens are still getting changed, good practice.