More "Hands On" Supervision In Food And Nutrition

In Food and Nutrition Patient services, nearly one hundred employees help to prepare and transport meals to patients. Generally these meals are prepared, loaded on to trays, and then placed in carts that are then transported to room service associates on the corresponding nursing unit.Every day in the morning and the evening, there is a “stand-up” meeting in the kitchen for food service workers.During the stand-ups, the manager on duty will gather everyone in a circle and go over important updates for the day. While a stand-up is in progress, patient meals still need to be delivered, so occasionally a room service associate will come down to the kitchen to grab their cart of patient meals, in an effort to not interrupt the stand-up meeting and ensure the patients are receiving their meals on time.On Sunday March 12, during a daily afternoon “stand-up” meeting for food service workers in the kitchen, a supervisor grabbed a worker by the arm and yanked them.In this instance, a room service associate came down to retrieve their cart, and one of the food service workers saw them waiting outside of the stand-up circle. The food service worker silently grabbed their cart and began to wheel it toward the waiting worker through the stand-up circle, when the supervisor grabbed him by the arm and yanked them away from the cart. The pull was enough to throw the worker off balance, in front of the entire staff assembled for the meeting. According to many witnesses of the event, there was no imminent danger to the employee that would explain this action.This event bears a resemblance to the recent event in which an employee was pushed by a superior in the kitchen, which has put some of the workers in the kitchen on high alert, for fear they will be grabbed or shoved by a manager and have to go through the same lengthy process that it took for the previous matter of physically inappropriate behavior by a superior in the kitchen to be settled.We are hoping that OHSU will take the correct action in this matter.