Will it go ’round in circles? A couple more pieces of the COVID-19 pie
By Steve MacArthur, Hospital Safety Consultant
As I try to embrace brevity as the soul of wit (which is likely to be as close to Shakespearean as this space is ever likely to venture), I have just a couple of resources to share with you folks this week. I do hope this finds you settling in (at least somewhat) to the current reality and the “new” stressors have subsided a bit.
Clearly, there’s been a lot of discussion regarding the protection of healthcare workers, mostly as a function of providing essential personal protective equipment (and the struggles that folks have faced in procuring said PPE). What is somewhat sketchier at the moment it to how organizations/employers are going to be held accountable for worker protection in the aftermath of the pandemic condition. But you might be able to gain some sense of things by consulting our friends at the federal Occupational Safety & Health Administration. While the OSHA website does speak of “discretion” in enforcement activities when considering an employer’s “good faith” efforts, I think it will be of critical importance that we be able to speak to a risk assessment to determine where folks jobs/tasks fall on the exposure continuum. OSHA indicates a spread of low, medium, high, and very high as risk categories with the enjoinder “(u)ntil more is known about how COVID-19 spreads, OSHA recommends using a combination of standard precautions, contact precautions, airborne precautions, and eye protection (e.g., goggles, face shields) to protect healthcare workers with exposure to the virus.” They also encourage the use of the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention as the primary source of current strategies, etc., so we can all work from the same source.
One of the other common threads of discussion relates to the disinfection of surfaces, etc., for which I would encourage you to check out the Environmental Protection Agency’s list of approved disinfectants (hopefully whatever your organization is using is on the list; not necessarily a deal-breaker if it isn’t, but there are always risks when one goes off-list). I keep reflecting on the reality that, in all likelihood, we won’t know what worked/didn’t work, etc., until this is long past it’s point of criticality, so it’s important to make sure that we can evidence a thoughtful process in identifying strategies. As of this writing (April 21), there does seem to be a growing unrest to get things back to normal, with some states opting to employ less restrictive strategies for distancing (in all its many permutations—who knew?). I am hopeful that we won’t be having this same discussion a month (or two months) from now if there is a resurgence, but it does seem inopportune to try and short-circuit a process before we have enough data to support easing up on things. I guess it all goes back to what they say about time—it will tell!
Stay safe!
About the Author: Steve MacArthur is a safety consultant with The Greeley Company in Danvers, Mass. He brings more than 30 years of healthcare management and consulting experience to his work with hospitals, physician offices, and ambulatory care facilities across the country. He is also a contributing editor for Healthcare Safety Leader. Contact Steve at stevemacsafetyspace@gmail.com.