Writting paper - Assignment Example

Response to Question Hospital A is faced with a unique challenge because of the debilitating ice storm. One the one hand, it has to cater to several affected local residents that would visit them as patients while on the other, the hospital had to be sensitive to its own staff members who were staying beyond their normal duty hours, that too with their pets and/or children. The hospital could take the following steps to address the twin challenge: a) The hospital can conserve captive power such as power from generators and UPSs by switching off needless power consumption devices (lights, heating in common or unused areas, limited air-conditioning, etc). This will help the hospital survive through the long dark period of several days without grid power. b) The hospital assigns a limited space as a ‘makeshift pet bay’ where employees are encouraged to leave their pets. An attendant is posted at the pet bay to care for the pets. c) The hospital orders limited yet sufficient quantities of pet food after checking which of the patients were not carrying food for their pets. d) Additional beds are arranged and readied temporarily in available extra rooms – this would help overstaying employees to take rest. Employees are allowed to have their children sleep with them in adjacent beds. Again, arrangements are made within the cafeteria to serve food to the employees and their children. e) The hospital encourages interested employees to take up over-time duty and help cater to the surge in patient inflow owing to the ice storm. The children, if any, of those employees are gathered into a separate room with an attendant standing in to care for them while the employees serve over-time duty. f) If the hospital is unable to host employees tagging along their pets or children due to inadequate space or facilities, the excess employees are escorted home with a safe mode of transport – if the weather is inclement at the given hour, the excess employees along with their pets or children are gathered into a common hall/room, and are provided basic conveniences – a portion of these employees, on voluntary basis, are enlisted for active duty to cater to hospital service demands. The hospital can make systemic corrections in one or more of the following ways in catering to similar events that might occur in the future: a) The hospital builds a pet bay and a crèche for children within the premises – these could easily be built with minimal space and facilities. b) Employees wishing to overstay beyond their duty hours can be utilized for auxiliary, critical or non-critical services, thereby benefiting both the hospital and the employee in terms of enhanced monetary gains. c) An emergency transport arrangement could be made available as a regular fallback arrangement to transport employees to home or other safe houses. A minimal number of employees can be retained to sustain normal hospital service demands. d) A proactive communication system can be developed to alert employees to stay away from work when faced with inclement weather conditions or other natural calamities. Only employees without pets and children can be called in for duty and offered enhanced pay for taking on extra hours duty. Response to Question (2) The following points of correlation are possible within the work environment of Hospital B: a) As a result of staff cutbacks curtailing male aids from patient transfers, most of the female aids are forced to take on higher number of patient transfers, thus leading to back injuries amongst them. b) As a result of staff cutbacks, each individual aid has to walk additional distance in reaching a new patient after transferring the current patient – this could involve gradient alleys or flight of stairs as well, thus leading to back problems and injuries. c) The average load that can be lifted, moved or pushed comfortably by a male aid is more than that by a female aid. Consequently, the cutback on male aids accompanied by use of female aids for patient transfer could lead to the development of back problems by the female aids. d) The male aids at the outset were themselves over-worked as they were primarily assigned for patient transfers – thereby leading to back injuries amongst male aids as well, triggering the cutback in their services. Hospital B can take the following measures to mitigate and/or eliminate the risk of back injuries: a) A scientifically designed program is delivered covering all aids, male and female, teaching them the right techniques of patient transfer. The occupational hazard of back injuries and associated care needed is also dealt with in detail. b) Injured aids are put through proper medical care on hospital pay, to recover them quickly. c) A proper balance is achieved in the number of male and female aids – that is, more female aids are recruited and a good mix of duties is enforced covering patient transfer as well as other activities. d) The hospital invests in transfer equipment that is ergonomically designed and offers increased occupational safety for aids performing transfers. Response to Question (3) The pro’s and con’s of the three different modes of creating the facility emergency plan to be created by Hospital C, are outlined below: a) Plan to be written by the hospital’s safety officer: Pro’s 1) The safety officer is familiar with the workings and operations of the hospital and is therefore best equipped to create the plan. 2) The safety officer is a subject matter expert on life and safety issues and therefore the right person to address emergency management plans – as the most important aspect of emergency management is to safeguard precious lives! 3) The safety officer is already aware of many emergency services and contact points by virtue of his role – therefore he is well placed to provide a practical and workable plan. Con’s 1) The safety officer is ‘conditioned’ to think in traditional ways of approaching the problem by virtue of his regular work – hence, he cannot bring in ‘new’ ideas and thoughts. 2) He/she has not possibly evidenced or experienced real emergencies thereby limiting his/her thinking. b) Plan to be created by a specially constituted planning committee Pro’s 1) A well organized committee with the right representation brings in order, structure and prominence to the plan creation process. 2) The right mix of people from different departments such as facilities, physical security, general operations, housekeeping, transport, etc. will ensure all key aspects of the plan are comprehensively covered – Each member brings his/her own domain expertise into the planning process. 3) Committees are usually better empowered to create plans and execute them in times of emergency – many a time, this team alone would be responsible and empowered to execute emergency procedures. Con’s 1) The planning process will demand more time due to the involvement of many people who have to schedule and attend meetings as well as agree on key discussion points. 2) The committee, if constituted only with internal employees, will have an inward perspective and not be aware of external subject matter expertise. c) Plan to be created by an experienced contractor Pro’s 1) The contractor is experienced and his rich expertise and knowledge will help evolve a sound and high-quality plan. 2) The contractor is likely to have many important contact points within key external agencies such as fire office, communication centers, climate centers, law enforcement, etc. He can build these contact points easily into the plan and make it very workable. Con’s 1) The contractor has to spend sufficient time in understanding the internal workings of the hospital. Even then, he might not understand the workings as well as for instance, the hospital’s safety officer. 2) The contractor is external and a subject matter expert – consequently his consulting charges would be very high and the hospital would need to absorb this cost. 3) Plan revisions can be quickly and far more easily performed with internal teams – the hospital will have a challenge calling in the external contractor every time into plan revision exercises. Response to Question (4) Hospital D is faced with a unique ‘double whammy’ situation – on the one hand, the safety officer has retired while on the other, there is an outbreak of flu. However, the following checks can be performed to isolate the real cause of the health issues that the employees are experiencing at this time: a) The hospital can have all affected employees undergo, at the hospital’s expense, medical tests to check for traces of the relevant flu virus. This will help isolate cases that are ‘not’ attributable to the flu. b) The hospital then appoints an operations manager to oversee the changed work conditions of the remaining affected employees – typically a process specialist performs a ‘time and motion’ study against the newly implemented process – this would confirm if there has been an unnoticed occupational health hazard introduced because of the new process. c) The hospital further needs to isolate internal causes such as safety of cafeteria food and drinking water facilities before coming to a conclusion on the cause of the health issues. The hospital is ‘compelled’ if not ‘obliged’ to pay medical test (only) bills for its employees as it is economically viable to pay for the test than have large-scaled absenteeism that would impact normal hospital operations. The management should conduct an independent survey of lifestyle, food and work habits of all affected employees in the recent past – this should be done in a sensitive yet comprehensive manner. Typical questions could be: a) Have you (employee) eaten outside of normal eateries in recent days? b) Have you attended a common party along with your colleagues and had any food or drinks out there? c) Have you been using any particular hospital facility such as drinking water bay or cafeteria food more frequently in the past few days? d) Have you been uncomfortable performing the new procedure that was rolled out as part of the new process implementation? e) If yes (to the above question), what was the exact problem or challenge? Can you describe this? f) Are you aware of the cause of your health issue? Have you got any checks performed? What has the doctor told in terms of the possible cause(s) of your symptoms? The management can fairly easily collate the results from the survey such as the above set of questions. If a majority of respondents indicate non-work reasons for their health issues, that would allow a reasonable conclusion that the newly introduced process is ‘not’ the reason for the health challenges. On the other hand, if a majority of employees have complained about the new process, it might be time to take a good, hard look at the new process and redefine it to remove associated risks. If the data is inconclusive i.e. the survey shows mixed results without definitive pattern of responses, the hospital should go ahead and perform the flu test on all affected employees – that way, the results would confirm one way or the other as to what the real cause of the health complaints is. Read More