AHE has started this initiative to encourage professionals in the field to begin, or continue to refer to the departments and the personnel caring for the healthcare environment as environmental services professionals rather than as housekeepers, janitors and custodians. The staff and management teams responsible for maintaining the clinical environment of care require different skills and competencies from those needed in the commercial cleaning and general maintenance industry and it's time we address this critical distinction.

Please help us redefine healthcare environmental services!

The AHE awards and recognition program acknowledges and elevates professionals who have demonstrated the highest level of excellence and leadership. Award recipients are those who work towards advocating and educating themselves on best practices and standards, developing new leaders within a hospital or healthcare facility, and promoting the environmental services profession.

Applications are due June 9, 2017.

Thomas A. Peck
Environmental services (ES) professionals recognize that labor expenses are a key component of all ES budgets.

Heather Punke, Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality
Patient Safety Awareness Week, an initiative of the National Patient Safety Foundation, runs March 12 through March 18 this year.

Pamela Mills-Senn, CleanLink
When is it better to repair a machine and when is it more cost-effective to simply replace it?

Claudia Buck, Sacramento Bee
Last week, Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento showed off its first-ever "germ-zapping" robot, a wheeled machine that emits pulsating ultraviolet light that’s been shown to kill off infection-causing bacteria.

Stephanie Soucheray, CIDRAP
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said in its weekly influenza surveillance report that influenza has likely peaked in the United States.

Brian Zimmerman, Becker's Infection Control & Clinical Quality
Since the CDC first warned clinicians in June 2016 about Candida auris — a deadly, drug-resistant yeast spreading around the world — dozens of infections have been reported among United States residents, according to The Washington Post.

Sarah Anwar, Contagion Live
Last year, both national and international health organizations officially recognized the link between infection with the Zika virus, and the development of several neurological complications in developing fetuses as well as in adults.

Infection Control Today
Standard precautions (SPs) are one of the cornerstones of infection prevention and control, designed to limit bloodborne pathogen exposures among healthcare workers (HCWs) and halt the transmission of healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) to patients.

Deep Patel, Forbes
No matter where we are on our career path, we will all have to wrestle with leadership roles at some point.

Marcel Schwantes, Inc.
Shortly before legendary management guru Peter Drucker's death in 2005, he made this bold declaration: Increasing the productivity of knowledge workers was "the most important contribution management needs to make in the 21st century."

By Carrie Schuster

By Carl Solomon Sr., MBA, FAHE, CHESP

Make yourself indispensable and advance your career! Plan your education for 2017. Visit AHE’s brand-new 2017 ENGAGE site to learn more about educational courses, podcasts, webinars, and events. And make sure to check out AHE's new EXPRESS Learning Courses. EXPRESS is a mobile learning platform that offers educational podcasts delivered by environmental services and infection prevention thought leaders. You asked for learning opportunities that require less of a time commitment and we delivered!

To acknowledge the ongoing and outstanding sustainability efforts of healthcare facilities - and environmental service departments in particular - the AHE presents the Environmental Sustainability Certificate Program. This program not only provides guidance on efficient, effective and value-added environmentally sustainable healthcare operations, but also provides it in such a way that is achievable within all budgets.