Hospital Engineers

Special SectionLook for the Helpers COVID-19 continues to challenge health care employees in every department of every hospital. This special section introduces several AHA Affiliated Group leaders who tell their hospitals' behind-the-scenes stories of triumphing over COVID challenges.

(Below) Conway Regional Environmental Services Supervisor Raymond Butler cleans a room.

(Above) Conway Regional Health System Maintenance installs a temporary wall. Pictured are Senior Maintenance Electrician Sean Brown (on the ladder) and Senior Maintenance Technician Tony Starnes. (Photos by Montie Hennard, Creative Specialist, Conway Regional Health System)

Behind the Scenes:

Hospital Engineers Meet COVID Challenges

By Eric Kindsfater, President, Arkansas Association of Healthcare Engineering

Hospital engineers are experts at problem solving. Every day in our work, we find solutions to difficult or complex issues – the very definition of meeting challenges.

Members of the Arkansas Association for Healthcare

Engineering (AAHE), an affiliate group of the Arkansas Hospital Association, provide clinicians, patients, and visitors with safe and functional environments of care.

It's been my distinct privilege to serve as AAHE President since 2019. As my term draws to a close this April, I’m reflecting on the significant contributions health care engineering professionals provide to their facilities.

Though not involved directly in patient care, hospital engineers – often-unsung men and women – provide an undeniably critical X factor to every health care organization.

During normal operations, health care engineering tasks range from the challenging and demanding to the routine and mundane. Managing positive and/or negative air flows, balancing the requirements of heating and cooling, providing availability of clean water, maintaining air exhaust and return systems, performing necessary preventive maintenance on all systems (both critical and non-critical), identifying efficiencies for energy consumption ... the list may at times seem never-ending.

OH, THE MESSES!

Health care engineering includes Environmental Services, whose teams dutifully execute their assignments 24/7. Visitors, patients, staff of all types … we make a lot of messes and generate a tremendous amount of work for the EVS staff. Whether it’s biohazardous waste from the lab and main operating room, cardboard boxes from Materials Management/ Supply Chain, or simple coffee spills from visitors, the Environmental Services team is there day-in and day-out to address needs. These processes are endless. The work is never finished. Work orders, emails, and phone calls continuously roll in. Which is more important: testing functionality of the critical branch of electrical service or adhering to strict cleaning guidelines for patient rooms? The truth is, each item, no matter how it may appear on the surface, is equally important. And the performance of these duties occurs Every. Single. Day. The scope of these efforts can be daunting: serving thousands of people, maintaining buildings with hundreds of thousands of square feet. We manage every operational system that keeps the air and water clean, the temperature comfortable, and the lights on.

Like our clinical counterparts, health care engineering teams are stretched by COVID to limits we have never experienced.

Our charge to provide a safe and sustainable environment of care is very challenging, and sometimes sobering, for health care engineers and their teams. Add a novel global pandemic to the mix and an already-complex web of systems and processes is compounded.

COVID has changed the roles of health care engineers in a significant and impactful way. Gone are the days of traditional project timelines. Conway Regional Health System Maintenance and Facilities Director and AAHE member Paul Mauldin explains: “When COVID first hit in early 2020, our team felt that renovating an existing 11-room behavioral health unit to accommodate COVID patients was in the best interest of all the patients we serve. We added negative air, medical

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Mitchell, Williams, Selig, Gates & Woodyard, P.L.L.C | Jeffrey Thomas, Managing Director MitchellWilliamsLaw.com gases, anterooms for each patient room, and anterooms for the unit. Our team began the work on a Friday and worked all weekend. We were up and rolling in a code-compliant COVID unit, ready for patients by 6 p.m. Sunday night. Under normal circumstances, a renovation of this scope would’ve taken closer to three weeks, not 58 hours. As the COVID patient surge increased, we performed the same process for an additional 15 rooms the next weekend. The way the team works together makes me proud; the crew is cohesive. The way they performed then, and the way they perform now, speaks to what they are able to achieve.”

We have all felt the effects of COVID. The landscape in which clinical care is delivered and the environment in which that care is practiced is changing in dramatic fashion. As each new COVIDrelated guideline is issued at the federal and/or state level, health care professionals, including its engineers and their teams, are answering the call.

Health care engineers take pride in rising to the demands of this historic period. Our mentality: adapt and overcome. Navigating any challenge allows for the emergence of problem solvers, and the privilege of serving our communities is certainly taking on a renewed and more purpose-driven approach during this pandemic. I have seen health care engineers rise to the occasion and exceed expectations for what otherwise might have been an impossible challenge. I know I join many of my colleagues in saying that we could not be prouder of the teams of problem solvers with whom we work each day. –

AAHE’s motto is “Education Through Association.” Since its founding nearly 60 years ago, the associative nature of AAHE has been invaluable to members. Formation of professional relationships very often organically turns into longlasting, personal friendships. AAHE members can (and do) routinely reach out to one another for concepts, ideas, and solutions essential to the provision of facilities-related services. Whether attending our quarterly educational conferences or the opportunity to fellowship during one of our AAHE Scholarship Trust fundraising events, association with one another is irreplaceable.