Need Input On This!! Iowa

Location: Iowa

I work at a private, physician owned medical clinic. This is a large multi-specialty clinic w/ numerous locations in a small region. I do ultrasound in the medical imaging dept, rotating within these locations. We use Metricide OPA (a very toxic liquid) to soak our vaginal probes in. The containers of this fluid are in our exam rooms where we spend a large part of our day (often open, soaking probes). There are much safer options available, but more expensive. The facilities I have worked prior to this one, when using this liquid, also had ventilation hoods over the product to help with air flow. We do not have this, and both techs and patients are breathing this in.

Some of our exam rooms are very small, and would not meet code for performing ultrasounds safely. Long story short, I ended up tripping over a chair and the exam table and managed to spill an entire gallon jug of this all over the exam floor. We immediately called our facilities lead and advised of large, toxic chemical spill and would need team with appropriate PPE/supplies to come and clean urgently.

Facilities sent over a single, uninformed guy who immediately started walking into the exam room. I stopped him and advised this was a toxic spill and he is not dressed appropriately.. I then called the facilities head and left a very detailed message explaining the spill, advising no appropriate cleaning supplies brought, ect and asked for a return call. We also sent and email to facilities, employee health, management, to which we received no reply.

We received no response from management and had patients scheduled, so I gowned and gloved up, but garbage bags on my shoes and cleaned the room with this other man. My eyes and throat were burning after doing so. This definitely went against my better judgement, but when offered no other solution or help, felt this was the only option.

After cleaning this room, I wrote a very detailed email to facilities, employee health, ect. explaining that since there was no protocol in place for this/facilities offered no help, I assisted in cleaning this, also explaining the eye and chest burning, ect.

To this I got an email from HR, requesting I fill out an incident report. Nothing else was said in that email.

I filled out the incident report, it was 4 pages in detail speaking of the problems with our room size, documentation how this product is unsafe and have had numerous conversations with management over the years about how we should not have this product in our rooms without proper ventilation, how our lives and patient lives are at risk, ect. I spoke of how horribly unprepared the company was, and how I should never have been put in the place to have to clean it myself.

After 2 weeks, I got zero response from HR/employee health. I reached out to my department leader and expressed my concern about this, to which she reached out to HR and they immediately emailed me stating, "I'm sorry, I got the impression through your incident report that you only wanted this documented, but did not want to be seen by a physician." They responded to none of my concerns in the incident report.

I then come to find out, employee health and facilities is accepting no responsibility for this, and is stating the entire clean-up process, safety issues, ect. is 100% on the medical imaging dept., not something the company would provide. The Safety data sheet states a spill like this should be cleaned by a team of trained professionals. Never in my 20 yrs of doing ultrasound have I ever been trained or had to have the equipment, ect to have to clean a spill like this. The medical imaging dept does not have a cleaning dept., the company does.

It seems like my complaints are not getting to the right individuals??? I'm looking for some input as to how to best approach this. Please help!