Dumpster diving just part of patient care
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After 18 years working in waste processing, Alex Astier is used to being surrounded by trash. But he usually isn’t as up close and personal with it as he was last month when he found himself rooting through a dumpster one hot afternoon.
Astier, a waste processor at Hershey Medical Center, got a call from his supervisor about a lost patient belongings bag that may have inadvertently been put in the trash.
“I thought the chances of finding the bag were extremely low due to the volume of waste processed by the facility daily,” said Gary Paronish, manager, facilities shift operations in the Facilities Department.
The department has received similar requests in the past and searched for discarded items to no avail, he said. Still, as always, a search effort was launched.
Astier knew the white patient belongings bag would most likely be found inside a black trash bag, if it had been scooped up as trash by accident.
And there were a lot of black trash bags.
“I look and I look, and I see no white bag,” said Astier, who first checked a mound of trash bags not yet tossed into the dumpster.
Having no luck, he did what he’s never done before – dumpster dive.
What was it like in there? “It was full of trash, so what do you think it was like?” Astier, who donned PPE before wading in, said with a laugh. “It was smelly, but we have to care about our patients.”
His valiant effort didn’t pay off there either, but after he climbed back out, he noticed one more trash bin waiting to be emptied into the dumpster.
Finally, in the last bag he checked— bingo! He found a white patient belongings bag and passed it off to his supervisor. He learned later that the bag contained the patient’s wallet and cell phone.
“When the bag was found, it was great relief, and we were all very glad to be able to return the patient her belongings,” Paronish said.
Astier shrugged off any extra praise. “If it’s something important and the patient needs it, in I go,” he said. “I try to do the best I can to help.”
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