5 Quick Wins for Managing Health & Safety
5 Practical Health & Safety Tips
For physiotherapy, chiropractic, osteopathic and other clinical practices, the key is understanding the risks that genuinely exist within your clinic and putting sensible, proportionate controls in place.
Here are five areas worth checking.
Walk through your clinic and consider how it really operates. Think about treatment activities, movement of patients, slips and trips, treatment couches and other equipment, cleaning products, sharps where applicable, lone working and staff working outside normal hours.
You should also consider people who may be particularly vulnerable or require additional support, including patients with restricted mobility.
Quick tip: When reviewing a risk assessment, ask yourself: "Does this describe what actually happens here?" If the answer is no, it probably needs updating.
Repeated treatments, sustained or awkward postures, assisting patients and moving equipment can all contribute to musculoskeletal problems over time.
Treatment rooms and equipment should allow clinicians to work comfortably wherever reasonably practicable, and early signs of discomfort shouldn't simply be accepted as "part of the job".
Quick tip: Ask your team whether there are particular treatments or activities that regularly cause discomfort or feel unnecessarily difficult. They will often identify issues that aren't obvious during a general workplace inspection.
Encourage staff to report defects as soon as they notice them and make it clear that damaged or potentially unsafe equipment shouldn't simply continue to be used until somebody gets around to fixing it.
Checks and maintenance should be proportionate to the type of equipment, how frequently it is used, and the consequences should something fail.
Quick tip: Include equipment condition in your normal clinic checks and make sure everyone knows how – and to whom – defects should be reported.
What happens during an evening appointment when fewer staff are present? How would you assist a patient with restricted mobility during an evacuation? Would everyone know what to do if a patient or colleague suddenly became seriously unwell?
The best emergency procedures are simple, understood and workable.
Quick tip: Occasionally talk through a realistic emergency scenario with your team. It can quickly highlight gaps that aren't obvious from simply reading a procedure.
A patient nearly tripping over a loose mat, a treatment couch intermittently malfunctioning, or a member of staff mentioning that a particular task is hurting their back are all opportunities to act before somebody is injured.
Encouraging people to report accidents, near misses, defects and concerns, without making the process unnecessarily complicated, allows you to identify patterns and deal with problems early.
Quick tip: When something does happen, don't just record it. Ask why it happened and whether there is anything reasonably practicable you can change to prevent it happening again.