Healthcare Workplace Safety Essentials

Health and safety for nurses, nursing assistants, transporters, environmental services, lab and support staff in hospitals, nursing homes, clinics and home health, following one invented community hospital and its long-term care wing: why healthcare has some of the highest injury rates of any industry, OSHA and state plans, OSHA's healthcare standards and guidance and The Joint Commission, safety committees, the hazards of patient care, slips, sharps, chemicals, violence, fatigue and shift work, reporting injuries and near misses, and a unit safety walk.

HSE-390 12 lessons · 4 h 31 min ▶ Video lessons coming soon

Offered by HSM University · Safety Training

This is the American version of this course. See the Canadian version.

What you'll learn

Explain why healthcare has some of the highest injury rates of any sector, sort its hazards into groups, and calculate and compare injury rates.
Describe the duties of healthcare employers, supervisors and employees under the OSH Act, MNOSHA and OSHA standards, Minnesota's hospital violence and safe patient handling laws, and The Joint Commission's workplace violence requirements.
Find hazards on a care unit through inspections, reports, task assessments and bedside checks, rate them by likelihood and severity, and choose controls using the hierarchy of controls.
Prevent slips, trips and falls in patient rooms, corridors, entrances, kitchens and clients' homes, and respond correctly to spills and falling patients.
Explain the chain of infection and the routes by which healthcare workers are infected, and apply standard precautions, transmission-based precautions, PPE sequences and fit-tested respirators.
Recognize the main chemical hazards in healthcare and use HazCom labels, safety data sheets, product review and emergency flushing to control them.
Explain how shift work, long hours and fatigue affect safety, check a schedule for fatigue risks, and apply personal and organizational fatigue controls.
Reduce musculoskeletal risk in support work such as moving beds, laundry, sterile processing, lab, pharmacy and computer work, including rating a lift with the NIOSH lifting equation.
Work safely in environmental services and the laundry, including isolation cleaning, disinfection devices, stray sharps, waste streams and laundry machines.
Recognize and control biological, chemical, cryogenic and hazardous drug hazards in laboratories and pharmacies, including the correct response to a centrifuge breakage.
Report injuries, exposures, violence and near misses promptly, explain the hospital's OSHA and Minnesota reporting duties, and help build a reporting culture.
Plan and carry out a care unit safety walk, score it, and turn the findings into an action plan with owners and dates.

Course content

12 lessons · 4 h 31 min total · final exam

1 Why healthcare work is hazardous 25 min · quiz
2 Law, standards and responsibilities in healthcare 22 min · quiz
3 Hazard assessment on a care unit 22 min · quiz
4 Slips, trips and falls in clinical areas 23 min · quiz
5 Infection hazards for workers 22 min · quiz
6 Chemical hazards in healthcare 22 min · quiz
7 Shift work, fatigue and long hours 23 min · quiz
8 Lifting, repetitive work and ergonomics outside patient care 23 min · quiz
9 Environmental services and laundry hazards 23 min · quiz
10 Laboratory and pharmacy hazards 22 min · quiz
11 Reporting injuries, exposures and near misses 21 min · quiz
12 Capstone: a care unit safety walk 23 min · quiz
E Final exam 20 questions

Requirements

HSE-101 Workplace Safety Orientation

Recommended background. You can start any course at any time.