Employee Safety and Emergency Preparedness in Hospice Care

This course teaches hospice aides, nurses, therapists and schedulers how to stay safe doing a job with no security desk and no colleague in the next room, and what their hospice's emergency preparedness program requires of them personally. Part one covers the visit itself: driving as the largest single risk in field work, arriving and reading a street before getting out of the car, the unconditional permission to leave an unsafe visit, and dogs and other animals. Part two covers the home as a work environment: walking surfaces, lighting, infestation, firearms, the shared duty for durable medical equipment under 42 CFR 418.106(f), infection control and standard precautions under 418.60, the oxygen and smoking combination that causes fatal home fires, and safe lifting and body mechanics in rooms never designed for care. Part three applies OSHA in a private home: the bloodborne pathogens standard 1910.1030, including the exposure control plan, the employee's right to be consulted on safer devices, free PPE, the absolute rule against recapping, sharps container requirements, hepatitis B vaccination within 10 working days at no cost, and the confidential post-exposure evaluation that must be made immediately available; and the hazard communication standard 1910.1200, including labels, the 16-section safety data sheet, SDS accessibility for field staff, and the fact that HazCom carries no federal annual retraining requirement. It also covers current NIOSH guidance for handling hazardous drugs in home settings. Part four covers de-escalating an angry family member. Part five covers emergency preparedness under 42 CFR 418.113: the all-hazards plan and risk assessment, patient triage and prioritisation by acuity and equipment dependency, the communication plan for when phones fail, evacuation and shelter in place including the requirements that apply only to hospices providing inpatient care directly, and the individual staff member's training, exercise and personal readiness obligations. Suitable for new-hire orientation and for annual OSHA bloodborne pathogens training.