Warwick Med have been selling personalised embroidered theatre hats for a year and a half now which has been helping the NHS to be more sustainable.
Feedback from hospitals have revealed that improvements in teamwork have been fantastic!
Just one of the many positives for staff wearing embroidered theatre hats in place of disposables is the huge reduction in waste by 1 tonne per year annually per hospital.
We are continuing to implement our embroidered range of personalised headwear however, we have learned a great deal over this period of the pros and cons to individual embroidered hats and are also mindful that visitors, birthing partners, company representatives and students being still required to wear disposable non-labelled hats.
As a visitor in theatre myself, I have been mistaken as a member of the clinical team on many occasions and the patient stories which we have been releasing (and are available on our website warwickmed.co.uk) have alluded to this also:
Scenario:
A prospective dad was asked several times to perform clinical duties when present at the birth of his twins was by his wife’s side and needed to be moved away as all theatre staff including the dad were all dressed in scrubs and masks so all looked the same and created understandable confusion.
When a member of staff leaves, the embroidered hat (which is personalised to them) cannot be used again. Home washing is also an issue for many hospitals as every infection control department is different and many refuse to allow theatre staff to take their embroidered hats home to wash, so they have no option but to wear disposables.
Coming Soon:
Warwick Med have been working very hard to develop and manufacture a robust product which can meet the needs of the different hospitals with and provide solutions to the challenges above which we feel is even more sustainable than embroidered theatre hats.
Our new product range will be able to :
Identify all visitors as well as members of the clinical team with named reusable theatre caps
Be centrally washed by the hospital laundry or the 3rd party laundry service which they use
If someone leaves their job role, the hat can still be used
We feel that we have the solution to all the above and we are working with Innovate UK and the Manufacturing Technology Centre in Coventry to test our products and help to create the best quality theatre hats which the NHS can implement across the country.
In addition, we are also working hard to make sure that our range is fully inclusive: Diversity, Equality and Inclusion to promote the representation and participation of different groups of individuals including people of different races, ethnicities, religions and cultures.
“Sustaining any profound change process requires a fundamental shift in thinking. We need to understand the nature of growth processes and how to catalyse them. But we also need to understand the forces and challenges that impede progress, and to develop workable strategies for dealing with these challenges” (Senge et al. (1999, P.10)
If you would like to be the first to hear when our products are ready to purchase then please fill your details in here and we can add you to the waiting list.