hospital corners.
By impactEDnurse • Sep 17th, 2008 • Category: reflective practice.
In this hand you have the theory, and in this hand the practice, and in the difference of their unfolding we make the beds our patients lay in.
As a new student nurse I was instructed in the correct way to make a hospital bed. A neatly folded rectangle of starched white is placed in the center of the bed and carefully unfolded.
This was done slowly, in a sort of gentle reverse origami, so as not to generate disturbing air vortices that might spread organisms from one patient to another. The overhanging sheet is tucked under the mattress with a series of slow poking karate chops. When you got good at it, you could tuck the entire length of the mattress with a single letter-opening sweep.
The sheet is tied under the mattress at one end, to stop the patient sliding down when the head of the bed is elevated. Granny knot. A tricky fixing ’cause the sheet only just reaches, and if you pull it through too much you end up with a banana bend in your bed.
Do it right and your bed is smooth as wedding cake marzipan.
Finally, the flourish that is the hospital corner. Lift the edge, corner tucks under and the overhang falls back down. Just like folding the nose of a paper plane. Flip. Flop.
My first day on a busy surgical ward and the registered nurse takes me out to make some beds. I place the starched rectangle in the center of the bed and began the unfolding. I am at one with the sheet.
Open, open, over and out to the edge. Move around to the other side. Open, open, over and out to the edge.
The nurse bends over the bed. Leans in real close.
‘Ian.‘
Sweep down the edge ( I had been practicing this move), and then flip….
‘Ian!!….what in the name of Nightingales nipples do you think you are doing exactly?’
Grabbing the sheet the nurse pulled my work undone and with a fisherman’s cast, slung the sheet out over the bed. It spun out in an instant of frozen gossamer before collapsing with a Hindenburg flop atop the mattress. It was crimpled and slightly askew.
Left over right. Right over left. On goes the top sheet. And the blanket. Fold it all back. Pillow is jackhammered into its case. Flop. Done.
‘We have twelve beds to make and then five people to shower in the next 45 minutes! Then we have to do the pill round and change those dressings. Save the bedroom Zen for home….this is a hospital!
And so I began to realize the difference between what we should do, and what we must do.
impactEDnurse is also known as Ian Miller, a nurse with over 26 years experience working in a busy emergency department in, Australia. This site in no way reflects the opinions of that hospital.
All stories (although based on actual experiences) have been changed to protect patient confidentiality.
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As a student, I wonder myself how much of what I learn is simply not practical in the real world. I also wonder when we will get to the point where non-trivial procedures and protocols will be discarded in favor of speed and ease. Ultimately I think it will be the patients who suffer unless we stand in opposition to it. Of course, as a student, maybe I’m just a bit too over zealous.
Yes I was rather awe inspired by bedmaking day in class recently only to have that all dashed in my first day of clinicals to discover that they fold the sheet sin such a way that you have NO choice but to fling the top sheet over the bed. Thank goodness for fitted sheets since it still took me 15 minutes to make one bed and shame of shame the CNA snuck in later and remade it (tucking in the blankets all the way round and undoing my corners)
Just curious…. in most places is it the nurses responsibility to make beds. At my hospital we have designated bed makers that are under the houskeeping department. Just one more reason for me to complain about our nurses.
I don’t mean to be a jerk but it seems like the nurses at my hospital do less and less each day. each RN has her own aide, and each unit has a unit secretary that fills out all the electronic lab/pharmacy requests… not to mention they don’t even have to make beds.
Working in the lab I don’t have my own secretary and aide yet on average get paid about 8,000 a year less, even though we have similar degrees…
When exactly did nurses get “too good” or “too educated” to do traditional nursing duties?
Working in ED I dont make many beds these days. When I worked in the wards though I loved making beds. A mindless task that leaves you free to daydream OR a great opportunity to engage with the patient and just have a chat.
And thus came the end of MY bedside nursing career…
Rob- where do you work that u get people to do beds for you?! Sounds fantastic.
Rob, I be right over for a job if I get to have an aide!
I take pride in making the beds as we were taught and as with everything practice makes perfect. It doesn’t take that long to do the job properly. And a well made bed is ensuring the comfort of your patient which is a part of basic nursing care
I am with you Jon, I make beds ‘properly’ and inspect the mattress at the same time for rips or ‘bottoming out’ and take a few minutes to talk to the patient. I dont think it takes much longer than a fitted sheet. These days spending time talking to our patients is a crime, and our profession is suffering because of that. We should hang on to making beds and showering patients.
I once worked in a city in the UK where they calculated nurses took the equivalent of 1 full time nurse per day less time making beds if they used fitted sheets & duvets. So they sacked her …. (true)
To same money, hospitals are now ’short sheeting’ the beds. We were always told to hospital corner top and bottom. Now the sheets are so short that you can only hospital corner the top and you do the opposite with the top sheet and blanket, all to same money. The problem is that patients wiggle in bed and you end up with sheets all over the place.