OSHA violations for a hospital - Assignment Example

OSHA OSHA Violations Occupational Safety and Health Administration (abbreviated as OSHA) is an in the Department of Labor, United States of America. It was established by the Occupational Health and Safety act in 1970. The main purpose of OSHA is to ensure that employees work in a healthy and safe work environment; this is by setting up with appropriate health or safety standards and ensuring that work organizations and employees adhere to those standards (Roughton, J., 2002). Awareness on acceptable safety and health standards is achieved through training and educating employees and the managers of the work organization, on provisions of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (Ladou, J., 2006). However, in the United States of America, it has been proved that some organizations or facilities do not satisfactorily comply with the health and safety standards indicated in the Occupational Health and Safety Act (1970), (Singh, D. 2010).In March, 2013, an employ filed a complaint at the OSHA offices against the Health East Ambulatory Surgical Center in Englewood, New Jersey for a serious Sharps Safety Violations.

Upon a thorough inspection by the OSHA officials, the facility was found to have seriously violated safety and health regulations. It was concluded that it has failed to adequately protect their employee from exposure to bloodborne pathogen hazards which had occurred as a result of the surgical procedure done within the facility. Besides, the organization was found to be liable for other violations including failing to have a written procedure, not involving non-managerial staff in the rescue process and failing to conduct a blood test on the staff member immediately after the incident.

These were indeed, serious violations which would have resulted into death or serious physical bodily harm on the victimized staff. Because of this, Health East Ambulatory Surgical Center was fined a total of $68,000. I would like to emphasize that this was a very intentional occurrence. It would have been prevented if the management had strictly complied with the stipulated occupational heath and safety standards. For instance, if the employee would have been immediately attended to just after the accident, he would have been saved.

However, the management never demonstrated any concern. Instead of collaborating with other staff members to offer immediate assistance to the employee, nothing was done so far thus, putting the life of this particular worker in danger. This was a high degree of negligence which had to be severely punished. Therefore if I were to help, I would intervene by offering preventive and responsive measures. First, in order to prevent such a disaster to occur, I would ensure that the surgery department has a clearly defined and well written procedure which should be stringently complied with while carrying out such procedures (Ladou, 2006).

This would help to prevent needlesticks. Besides, I would respond to the emergency by offering blood test, make post-exposure prophylaxis, counseling services, giving a formally written evaluation document for the needlestick and an authentic copy of OSHAs bloodborne pathogen standard. This would not only help save the life of the endangered employee, but also prevent the organization from any possible punishment from OSHA. ReferencesLadou, J. (2006). Current Occupational & Environmental Medicine (4th Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Professional.

Roughton, J. (2002). Developing an Effective Safety Culture: A Leadership Approach (1st Ed.). Butterworth-Heinemann.Singh, D. (2010) Effective Management of Long-Term Care Facilities. (2nd Ed.). Sudbury, MD: Jones and Bartlett Publishers.