Environmental Services Team members work behind the scenes to support quality and safe surgical care

It’s 5 a.m. and the sky is still dark. While many people are sleeping, Amy Parker is starting her shift in the operating rooms (ORs) at Valley Regional Hospital. She begins with a thorough checklist for pre-cleaning and disinfecting surfaces to ensure that every room is ready to help the first surgery of the day start on time. 

As an environmental services worker supporting the Valley Regional Hospital ORs, Amy, and her colleagues, Jen Bigelow and Ange Garrison, play a critical, yet often unseen, role in ensuring operating rooms are safe, sterile and ready for every patient. 

“Some days we support 20 cases before 3 p.m.,” she said. “We begin by scanning the room from ceiling to floor. Each of us is assigned a role to clean and prepare the OR before and between cases, and we rotate those roles throughout the day.” 

Valley Regional Hospital has six operating rooms that are used to deliver more than 6000 scheduled or emergency surgeries and procedures a year including general, orthopedic, urologic, obstetrical/gynecological, oral, vascular, cardiology and ear nose and throat cases. 

Between each scheduled or emergency surgery, Amy and the team perform a turnover clean. This means that surfaces from floor to ceiling are methodically cleaned, disinfected and sterilized in accordance with national standards to make them safe for the next patient. This includes disinfecting all high-touch surfaces from the operating room table and IV poles to the knobs and light switches. 

Depending on the type of surgery, cleaning times can vary. For smaller cases, the team may need 10 to 15 minutes to complete a turnover clean, where other more invasive or more complex surgeries may require up to 30 minutes. When all surgeries have been completed for the day, Amy’s colleagues, Tyler and Thanu, the evening staff complete a terminal cleaning. This thorough, end-of-day disinfection process ensures a sterile environment for the next day’s cases.  

The number of procedures completed in Valley Regional Hospital ORs has been climbing in recent years, up nearly 500 cases in just three years — an accomplishment that would not be possible without environmental services teams who support the ORs. 

Environmental services teams are found across the hospital but in the operating room, the team members are uniquely equipped and suited to handle the attention to detail and unique challenges of working in an OR environment. 

“Before training begins in the OR, environmental services staff have usually worked in the different areas across the hospital already,” said Amy. “I began my training in medical device reprocessing (MDR), and it was there that I first learned the sterile procedures and proper personal protective equipment (PPE).” 

Though turning over the operating room with speed and efficiency is important, Amy stresses that nothing is more important than getting the job done well. 

“When we come into the clean the operating room, we think to ourselves, would we want to have our families having surgery in this room. We take our job seriously and want patients to feel safe and confident having their surgeries done in our rooms.” 

Photo of (L-R) Amy Parker and Angela Garrison.