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Replacing one bedside table is easy. Replacing 582 bedside tables in a single day requires planning, teamwork, and volunteers.

“It’s one of these little things that is massive,” says Mike Friesen, Director, Clinical Engineering. “Bedside tables are not complex. It’s not like replacing them requires an IT system upgrade or anything.”

Friesen’s not wrong about the size of the project. It took six tractor trailers to deliver the new bedside tables. But we could not just take them off the truck and deliver them to the rooms. Our patients were in those rooms. Sleeping. Visiting with family. Healing. Nursing helped coordinate when the rooms were available for delivery of the new tables.

“The first thing we had to do was figure out who ‘owned’ the bedside tables,” he says. “Was it Nursing or Clinical Engineering? Who maintained them?” Nursing and Clinical Engineering partnered and agreed that Clinical Engineering would be responsible for all bedside tables in the hospital. “From there, we used some positive budget variance from last year to replace them lock, stock, and barrel — all 582 of them.”

“We built a project plan and then solicited volunteers and ‘volun-tolds’ to physically move the new tables into the building,” says Friesen. Team members started unloading the trucks on Saturday, Sept. 8, at 5 a.m. and completed the job at 1 p.m.

A large group of UVA Health System team members helped get the job done, moving the bedside tables from the truck to the area where they would be cleaned and then shuffled to the units and swapped out for the old ones. “It was like a bucket brigade,” says Holly Hintz, Director of Nursing Practice & Research. “We rolled these tables from one volunteer to the next down the hall.”

“In came the new ones and, on the same day, out went the old ones,” says Friesen. “It was something to see.”

Hintz says that the new tables are standard bedside tables; simpler than what we previously had. “Our beds have a power drive under them — to help team members move the beds without getting injured — and these new bedside tables better fit under the new beds, which is fantastic,” she says. With less bumping against that power drive, Hintz hopes there will be a reduction in spills and staff frustration. “We were thoughtful about our choice. The new ones are basically just a slab of Formica on wheels. But that means there is less for Environmental Services to clean, which is great from an infection-control perspective.”

Hintz is glad to see the old ones go — some which no longer rolled. “We had to drag a lot of those old tables out of those rooms!”

Friesen and Hintz say they’ve received a lot of positive feedback about the change. Staff wanted simple, cleanable, and reliable, and that’s what was delivered.

Please join us it offering a special thanks to all of the team members who helped make this happen, including Patient and Equipment Transportation, Nursing, Clinical Engineering, Environmental Services, Store Room and Dock Team, and all of the volunteers who assisted. A true team effort.