CEHE MED122 Week 4 Discussion Latest 2020 June

MED122 Medical Asepsis

Week 4  Discussion

OSHA Requirements at Healthcare Facilities

Learning Objectives Covered

LO 03.01 – Discuss the role of OSHA requirements in healthcare facilities

Career Relevancy

As a healthcare worker, you will encounter many occupational hazards. From disease and infection to chemicals and x-rays, you’ll regularly be exposed to materials and substances that will be hazardous to your health. Because healthcare facilities are technically putting you at risk, it is their job to establish safeguards to prevent you from getting hurt or sick. Fortunately, OSHA helps employers protect their employees by providing standards and guidance. These standards affect your everyday life, so you should be familiar with them and know what kind of work environments you have a right to work in. You should also be able to follow guidelines set by OSHA and recognize hazards as they arise. This can help you address the issues yourself or refer to someone else, which can ensure the safety of you and your colleagues.

Background

OSHA

Even though he still feels like a rookie, medical assistant Luca has now been working at Stonehill Community Clinic for several weeks. Every day, he learns something new about medical asepsis and decontamination, from sterilization techniques to glove removal protocols to methods of interrupting the chain of infection. He’s well on his way to becoming an expert healthcare professional! He understands the importance of keeping medical facilities clean and sanitized so that no patients or staff members are put at risk.

But the more he learns, the more questions he has—particularly around the government standards and requirements that have been established to keep him, and his colleagues, safe. What role do these regulations play in healthcare facilities?

On his next break, Luca dives back into his research. He looks into OSHA, specifically—the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. OSHA lays out many specific rules for all workplaces, and its objective is to ensure employers are providing safe, healthful, and non-dangerous workplaces for their employees. The agency sets and enforces protective standards, provides training and education, establishes partnerships, and encourages improvement in the areas of employee safety and health.

When it comes to healthcare facilities specifically, OSHA provides many regulations and guidelines. Luca discovers that these regulations touch all sorts of situations and contexts, from addressing bloodborne pathogens to preventing exposure to hazardous chemicals to helping reduce the likelihood of respiratory illness transmission. These are a few that he investigates further.

Hazard Communication Standard: Ensures employees know about hazardous chemicals in the workplace and how to protect themselves

Bloodborne Pathogens Standard: A specific regulation that helps protect employees from exposure to pathogens in the blood, which they might handle as they treat patients

Ionizing Radiation Standard: Applies to facilities with an x-ray machine, and provides guidance to keep employees from being exposed to radiation

Personal Protective Equipment (PPE): Helps employers provide the necessary PPE to their employees to protect them from infectious disease and harmful substances

Ergonomic Hazards: Addresses the major ergonomic stressors for employees at healthcare facilities, such as lifting and repositioning patients and lifting materials

Slips, Trips, and Falls: Aims to mitigate the number of slips, trips, and falls in medical facilities, which happen often due to wet or dirty floors

Influenza and Tuberculosis: Standards that aim to prevent employee exposure to respiratory and other types of easily communicable illnesses

Chemical Hazards: Specifies regulations to protect employees from exposure to chemicals regularly used in healthcare facilities

Luca decides to check out a couple of videos (2:22 min, 4:55 min) about OSHA generally and specific requirements.

Resources and References

Compliance Assistance Quick Start. (n.d.). Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Retrieved from https://www.osha.gov/dcsp/compliance_assistance/quickstarts/health_care/index.html#index (Links to an external site.)

Healthcare. (n.d.). Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Retrieved from https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/healthcarefacilities/infectious_diseases.html (Links to an external site.)

Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA ). (2016, January 31). The Business Professor. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/5WtDRIDXcJs (Links to an external site.)

OSHA Bloodborne Pathogen Training. (2015, November 17). Align Home Health. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/_1yhNtCnxyM (Links to an external site.)

 

Prompt

Healthcare facilities can inadvertently put their employees at risk for all sorts of diseases and injuries. As a government agency, OSHA plays a major role in helping these facilities protect their employees from becoming hurt or sick.

For this discussion, imagine a facility without OSHA requirements for workplace safety. Describe a scenario occurring in the facility that puts the employees at risk. In your opinion how much have OSHA regulations helped the healthcare industry, and what more could be done to prevent dangerous situations, sickness, or injury?

For your citation, you might use articles that show examples of how facilities have either adhered to or neglected OSHA requirements and the consequences. You can also find articles from experts that discuss how OSHA has developed its standards or what situations have led to a specific regulation.

You will also complete two peer responses. In each peer response, you will reply to your peers’ posts with thoughtful, substantive ideas. Consider answering some of these questions: Is there anything your peer missed or overlooked? Are there other ideas to consider? Is there a current event or episode that you can bring into the conversation? Expand and deepen the discussion—introduce new concepts or controversies, add thoughtful and insightful questions, and make new connections to your own experiences or the material.

Your initial and reply posts should work to develop a group understanding of this topic. Challenge each other. Build on each other. Always be respectful, but discuss this and figure it out together.

Reply Requirements

You must submit:

1 main post of 150+ words with 1 in-text citation and reference (follow the Institution Writing Guidelines)

2 follow-up posts (replies) of 50+ words

Responses can be addressed to both your initial thread and other threads but must be:

Your own words (no copy and paste)

Unique (no repeating something you already said)

Substantial in nature, which means there has to be some meat to the reply not something like: “Good job, Rasha, your post is excellent.” A substantial post will do one of the following:

Extend the conversation deeper,

Challenge the post being responded to, or

Take the conversation in a career-relevant tangent

Remember that part of the discussion grade is submitting on time and using proper grammar, spelling, etc. You’re training to be a professional—write like it.