Health and safety have become some of the top buzzwords that people use on a regular basis thanks to the emergence of CoVID. Prior to the pandemic, those words were used as a way to get OSHA off of your back: safety wasn’t always the priority despite many businesses claiming that was so.
Now, these words have a totally new definition that relates to far more than physical safety and wellness. Finally, the idea of mental health and safety has entered the very important, and at times volatile, subject of taking care of employees.
From using expert companies such as Global Messaging to handle your inbound calls, to utilizing standardized safety measures put into place, this review will cover it all!
Clean Doorknobs
I know it sounds like the simplest thing in the universe: just clean the doorknobs.
When you have a medical facility under your control, there are a multitude of diseases, viruses, bacteria, and more that enter your facility where people trust you to take care of them.
It should come as no surprise that bacteria love to mix and mingle on doorknobs. Even if you wear gloves, the patients aren’t wearing gloves and probably aren’t as conscientious about the way that viruses and bacteria spread.
Because of that, it is important to spray down doorknobs several times a day. It doesn’t matter who does it, as long as it is done.
Sanitize Common Use Areas
Aerosolized sanitation, light sanitation, and other forms of sanitation can all be used to keep common areas clean. This doesn’t just mean where the patients sit. This also includes break areas, rooms dedicated to specific services such as phlebotomy, and more.
Another way to look at this to see if an area is a common use space is to count how many people go into the area in a day. More than five people? Common use.
If you have several spaces like this, it’s important to use covers, gloves, and more to keep surfaces clean. Don’t forget to clean counters, faucets, doorknobs, any flat surfaces, spray down chairs, and ensure all utensils are wrapped in new covers between patients.
Use Additional Services
When it comes to the mental health of your team, this can require a bit of thinking outside of the box. From answering services that take away some of the pressure of handling patients to project management systems that take pressure off of you through automation, there are endless options here.
Don’t be afraid to invest in the mental health of your team by utilizing additional technological resources to smooth out processes and maintain documentation. Every bit that allows your team to refocus on the patient will help you, them, and the patient experience more ease in the day.
Office Space Quarantine
While it can be very difficult to do this, quarantining specific teams that work together regularly can help prevent the spread of more than just CoVID. More importantly, quarantining keeps the rest of your staff healthy and prevents additional spread of something that could have been kept at bay.
Since CoVID is one of the more curable types of corona viruses, don’t forget about other flu types that occur on a yearly basis: no matter what an employee is sick with, make sure that you quarantine to keep a safe environment.
Discuss Healthy Workplace Expectations
A safe workplace is a balanced workplace. What this means is that your employees have both physical and mental health going for them on a daily basis. This can’t occur without leadership making a point of it to discuss a few safety measures that should always be implemented.
Avoid Overworking
In the medical field, overworking is one of the most dangerous aspects of the business. Doctors and nurses alike can have shifts that are more than twelve hours long. These types of shifts, while necessary, can lead to worn down immune systems, foggy brain, and even more serious side effects like hallucinations if they have multiple shifts like this back to back.
Enforce Mandatory Breaks
A Way to avoid such drastic issues in the workplace and keep people healthy is to enforce mandatory breaks. These can be paid or unpaid and often don’t last more than fifteen minutes.
Those fifteen minutes are some of the most important minutes in the day of someone who works in medical. Without those breaks, no matter how strong someone is, people can wear down much faster and contract infections much faster than those that have proper sleep and breaks.
Conclusion
If you haven’t talked to your team about how important mental and physical safety are, then it is time to do that. Your medical facility requires many levels of safety from building safety to the safety of your patients and employees.
Hopefully, these new ways of looking at safety can help you make informed decisions on how to implement new safety protocols in your health facility.
