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DiversityNursing Blog

Nurses Are Recycling Plastic Medical Supplies To Create Art

Posted by Erica Bettencourt

Mon, Jun 03, 2019 @ 11:14 AM

mosaic2Two creative Nurses saw the opportunity to not waste plastic medical materials. They each used them to create beautiful works of art for their patient's to enjoy.

Registered Nurse, Beth Beaty, works at Roper Hospital in SC. According to Nurse.org, she first began experimenting with turning supplies into art when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and recuperating at home.

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It took Beaty a year to create her other work of art depicting Rainbow Row in Charleston, South Carolina, using strings from patient belonging bags, a stethoscope, and plastic caps from medications like antibiotics, flu shots, anticoagulants, insulin and morphine.

According to an ABC news article, the painting is dedicated to Dr. Julia Haile, a beloved infectious disease physician who passed away. Dr. Haile seemed to love the idea of the piece and would often ask about it. Beaty said “She was always very encouraging and excited about it. I just thought it was a perfect tribute to her.”

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Beth also told the news outlet, “I think part of what makes this cool is for Nurses, we recognize all of these caps. For other people, it’s just a nice piece of art. Everyone has a different appreciation for it. And I like being able to tell patients that their medicine cap will be used in a painting – it lights up their face and makes such a difference.”

Tilda Shalof was an ICU Nurse at Toronto General Hospital for three decades. When she decided she was ready to retire, she wanted to leave something behind for the hospital.

Shalof had saved up bags of medicine caps, lids, IV tubes and other connectors. It took her a year, but with all of her materials, she created a mosaic measuring 9-feet-by 4-feet. The finished piece contains 10,000 pieces!

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She said, "I hope young doctors and young nurses see this and hopefully it makes them remember that all these little things we do are huge for the patient. Each thing that we did with each little piece of plastic meant so much to the patient. And that's really what this mural represents."

Tilda ultimately decided not to retire. Instead, she made the decision to leave the fast pace and long hours of the ICU and work at the Toronto Western Hospital in their radiology department. Occasionally she’ll go back to the other hospital to visit her art.

Do you have a creative use for recycled hospital materials? Please share it below. We would love to see what our artistic Nurses have made!

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Topics: recycling, art in hospitals, medical supplies

The Vital Role of Nurses in Addressing Climate Change

Posted by Contributor

Thu, Sep 28, 2017 @ 01:56 PM

homepage_6_orig-1.jpgThis article was written by the MODERN NURSE at www.discovernursing.com

Nurses are the largest group of healthcare providers and you have a lot of power. You can help make changes that affect your patients and the environment. With climate change on the rise, you can create awareness of areas within your place of employment that need improvement. The reduction of strong chemicals, plastics and paper items can have a strong impact. Check out this interview regarding the Nursing community and how you can affect environmental change.

Public awareness and interest in all things “green” has created a need for nurses to understand environmental issues and their relationship to health with credible, evidence-based information, as well as provide leadership in making the necessary changes in our policies and practices. Cara Cook, MS, RN, AHN-BC, is working to increase awareness and promote action that addresses climate change as a health imperative among the nursing community through her role as climate change program coordinator for the Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments (ANHE). We spoke with Cara, who was recently chosen as a 2017 Johnson & Johnson Global Citizen Young Health Leader, about the connection between environmentalism and nursing, and how her background as a nurse has prepared her for advocacy work.

Nursing Notes (NN): How long have you been a nurse, and what significant changes have you seen in the nursing profession since you began practicing?

Cara: I’ve been a nurse for a little more than eight years, and one major change I’ve noticed is the nursing contribution to environmentally safe practice environments. Nurses have long been advocates for safe nurse-patient ratios and preventing adverse health outcomes, such as falls or healthcare-associated infections. In addition to those important patient safety issues, nurses are realizing the connection between the environments in which we live, work, and play, and how this influences health outcomes.

Nurses are at the forefront of change within practicing settings through advocating for use of safer chemicals in hospital cleaning supplies, by forming green teams or sustainability departments that focus on reducing an institution’s environmental impact, or from working in communities to ensure patients have access to healthy foods and safe areas to exercise.

NN: Why is understanding climate change important for nurses?

Cara: Climate change is one of the biggest global health threats we face today. Nurses are on the frontlines of communities caring for patients impacted by climate change, so it’s important for nurses to understand the connection between climate change and health, and how the health sector can respond.

As the most trusted profession and largest group of healthcare providers, nurses are urgently needed to lead the fight against climate change. Being aware of and advocating for solutions to limit and respond to climate change is within our scope of nursing practice, with our own practice standards stating the “registered nurse practices in an environmentally safe and healthy manner.”

NN: How did you get involved with ANHE?

Cara: As part of my master’s program, I was required to complete a certain number of hours for two semesters with a public health organization. Since my area of interest is in environmental health, I was paired to work with Katie Huffling, the executive director at ANHE. At that time, my work with ANHE involved federal reform of toxic chemical policy and participation in campaigns at the state level focused on advancing health-protective regulations for hydraulic fracturing and antibiotic use in animal agriculture. About a year after I graduated, ANHE received funding to expand their climate change and health program, and I came on board as a full-time employee.

NN: How has your background as a nurse prepared you for your current position?

Cara: Nurses feel very comfortable advocating on behalf of patients in healthcare facilities, so all it took was learning how to translate that skill into the policy arena. Another core part of nursing that has prepared me for my current position is the focus on evidence-based practice. Environmental health or climate change work is similar in that you need to look at the evidence in order to understand the issues and potential solutions, and how to adequately communicate this to the public or legislators.

Also, I think being able to work through the unanticipated and creatively solve problems when everything seems to be going wrong, as so often is needed in bedside nursing, has helped with working through some of the challenges in environmental health work.

NN: What do your day-to-day responsibilities look like as a climate change program coordinator?

Cara: My role includes spearheading ANHE’s climate change and health program that aims to increase awareness among the nursing profession on the health impacts posed by climate change. Through this program, I work to engage individual nurses and nursing organizations in prioritizing climate change as a health imperative, emphasizing the urgency for nursing action in frontline communities and in an advocacy role. One of our current initiatives is working to form a Nursing Collaborative on Climate Change and Health, which is an effort to unite national nursing organizations around climate change, with the goals of bringing health to the forefront of discussion and policy-making and ensuring a coordinated nursing response across specialties.

Since our organization has a small staff, I also help with our other environmental health initiatives, currently focused on water and health, air pollution, energy and health, safer chemicals, and food sustainability. ANHE also provides advocacy trainings, which I help organize and run, for nurses to learn how to be successful advocates on environmental health issues.

NN: What is your favorite part of your job?

Cara: My favorite part of my job is working with and meeting such amazing nurses. Working for ANHE allows me to meet and work with a variety of nurses from different specialties and learn more about the work being done to address environmental health issues. I lead ANHE’s Global Nurses Climate Change Committee, which provides an opportunity to connect with nurses across the world and learn about what is being done in other countries around climate change.

Another perk of my job is being able to talk with nurses about climate and health, and help them learn how they can move action forward in their own practice. It’s rewarding to inspire nurses to take action and to see how passionate they become when they learn about how climate change is creating significant challenges for health.

NN: What is the most challenging part of your job?

Cara: With environmental health work, and even policy work in general, it can be challenging not to get discouraged. Working with such a strong group of nurses helps to keep the momentum going when efforts can be disheartening.

NN: Looking forward, what advancements/changes do you expect to see in nursing?

Cara: Our healthcare system is in a fragile state, and there must be some dramatic changes for the system to be sustainable. We are already seeing a shift to prevention and building up the primary care system, with increasing attention to how environmental factors can affect health, and I think nurses and nurse practitioners will have a major role in this shift as our profession branches off into different avenues of care outside of traditional settings.

NN: Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Cara: Many of these environmental health issues, including climate change, can seem so daunting, almost as if there is nothing that can be done to reverse the course of action. However, there are solutions to address these complex issues and we are at a critical point where, as nurses we can make a big impact on the health of our patients and communities. Nurses are so important to moving the health message forward on climate change and, collectively, we have incredible power to drive change.

To learn more about environmental health and how climate change impacts health, or to join ANHE, visit envirn.org. For more information on Health Policy Nursing, visit DiscoverNursing.com. To learn more about the Johnson & Johnson partnership with Global Citizen, visit jnj.com/progress

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Topics: environment, recycling, waste, Climate Change, plastic waste

Phoenix nurse fashions hospital discards into totes

Posted by Alycia Sullivan

Mon, Jul 01, 2013 @ 02:33 PM

For four decades, Donna Dalsing watched as colleagues threw heaps of blue medical wraps in trash bins.

The Phoenix Baptist Hospital nurse said the waste bothered her. After all, the wraps — clothlike polypropylene that bundles surgical utensils used in operating rooms — weren’t dirty or mangled. She would take some of it home for personal use, but she couldn’t figure out how to stop the problem on a larger scale.

Then Dalsing, 62, attended a green convention for medical professionals in Denver in 2012.

She saw others who recycled the wraps and made them into tote bags.

“It was like a lightbulb went off,” Dalsing said. “This is what we can do with the blue wraps.”

Dalsing, founder of the Abrazo Health Hospital’s Phoenix Baptist green team, shared the idea with her team members — and they started sewing.

The bags were a hit. Officials have given them out at the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure and I Recycle Phoenix events.

Now, non-profit Keep Phoenix Beautiful officials want to organize their own sewing team to make the totes.

Nationwide issue

Recycling the blue wraps is part of a movement by the nation’s hospitals to battle medical-material waste, especially in operating rooms. The New York Times reported that many medical industries started to confront the amount of waste generated in 2010.

The nation’s hospitals produced nearly 6 billion tons of waste per year, according to the fall 2011 Medical Waste Management News, a quarterly publication that serves health-care facility waste-management workers. The publication estimated that 19 percent of the waste is blue wrap.

Blue wraps seal surgical instruments, and hospitals generally dispose of themonce opened.

Focus on recycling locally

Other Arizona hospitals have recycling initiatives focused on blue wraps as well.

Jeremy Owens, St. Luke’s Medical Center’s director of material management, said the hospital reduced its use of blue wraps last year. The operating room now uses sterilization containers instead of blue wraps.

Workers wash, clean and sterilize the containers before they reuse it to bundle surgical utensils.

The change cut down on the use of blue wraps by 75 percent, Owens said.

IASIS Healthcare, which operates 20 hospitals across the nation, including St. Luke’s in Phoenix, recycles other medical products and diverts 22 tons of material from landfills, Owens said. The Phoenix hospital started recycling about 2005, he said.

Abrazo Health has six hospitals in the Valley,including Phoenix Baptist. The hospital started its recycling program in 2011.

The hospital’s green team consists of staff from Phoenix Baptist, Maryvale and Arizona Heart hospitals.

The team works with national groups with similar goals, such as Practice GreenHealth and HealthCare Without Harm. The green team collects general information on sustainability in the medical industry and networks with other sustainable medical staff throughout the nation.

Making the blue totes

Dalsing, a northwest Phoenix resident, took the helm of the hospital’s green team in 2011.

She is a lifetime recycler both at home and work. Before Phoenix Baptist embraced recycling, Dalsing collected recyclable material, such as soda bottles and cardboard boxes, at work and took them home to recycle.

Today, Dalsing’s mission is to boost the hospital’s recycling program.

Dalsing estimates that Phoenix Baptist throws away about 33,576 varied-size sheets of wrap per year.

Her group wants to lower those numbers significantly. Once she discovered how to sew blue wraps into tote bags, she worked with the hospital officials for permission to collect the material. The team now takes some of the wraps home and sews them into bags.

One large sheet of blue wrap can create three to six bags, depending on their thickness and size. The shoulder bags are about 17 inches long and 15 inches wide, with a 32-inch-long strap.

The bags take about 30 minutes to cut and sew.

Most recently, the green team sold handbags for Earth Day to the hospital staff. They earned about $60, which they will use to finance other recycling efforts.

Bags make their debut

The bags made their public debut during Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in October. The team sewed 65 bags, stuffed them with promotional items and handed them out to participants.

The green team later tailored 50 bags to give out during the I Recycle Phoenix, which scheduled a recycling event to collect electronics, glass, cellphones, batteries, chargers, lightbulbs and shred paper. Christown Spectrum Mall hosted the 2012 event in late December.

Phoenix Public Works Department contracts with Keep Phoenix Beautiful, a sister of Keep America Beautiful and a non-profit organization. Keep Phoenix Beautiful organizes and implements several programs about litter prevention and recycling initiatives, which include the I Recycle Phoenix event.

Tiffany Hilburn, Keep Phoenix Beautiful special-events manager, saw the bags for the first time.

“They were amazing,” Hilburn said. “I didn’t know you could make anything out of the blue wrap.”

Hilburn wondered what else was out there that could be recycled into a bag.

Future projects

Dalsing’s team also is working on other projects: replacing Styrofoam cups with reusable cups, replacing a smoking area with a tranquil garden.

Dalsing said the team has much work ahead and needs partners to sustain the project.

The group reached out to Arizona State University’s Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, which offered an engineer to work with the team. The engineer will help the hospital identify other medical waste they could recycle.

Recycling begins with the hospital staff, Dalsing said.

“It’s a culture change,” Dalsing said. “Experts tell me it’ll take four to five years to make things happen because we are trained to think to throw everything away. Now we are trying to train the staff to rethink before you throw things away.”

Nurses, are any of the hospitals you work at utlilizing similar recycling efforts? Comment below!

Source: AZ Central

Topics: nurse, recycling, Phoenix Baptist Hospital, totes, medical wraps

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