Measures For A Safe & Healthy Workplace
It’s been more than a year and we are still battling the Pandemic. The best we can do is keep fighting and follow all protocols to stop the spread. A lot of people have been confined to their homes with the work from home option. But our true covid warriors – The health care workers have been on the frontlines battling the pandemic.
Statistically speaking, we are more than three times likely to catch the infection compared to the public. But this has not stopped us for a second to carry out our duty to the patients. Given the high infection levels inside our labs and collection centers, we have taken all possible precautionary measures to protect our staff.
1. Social Distancing:
We have divided our staff into 2 groups that work on alternate days to curb the spread.
The staff at home are trained to follow safety measures to protect themselves and their families.
We have limited entry to the canteens to avoid over-crowding. Our call centers stand a high risk of contracting the infection, hence we spread them across many floors in some cities and moved most of the calls to mobile phones manned by staff.
We have restricted the movement of staff between departments and contained them to their respective workstations that are frequently sanitized.
All meetings have become virtual to ensure we avoid getting staff together in one place.
The front desk staff also have been trained to maintain adequate distance from the patient and we have established a crowd control protocol to manage the patients. Travel has been reduced to the bare minimum and in absolutely necessary situations.
2. Personal Protective Equipment:
All staff that comes in close contact with the patients (Front office, Phlebotomy, accessioning , Clinical, Logistics, other technical areas) are following strict SOPs of wearing PPE.
a. Lab coats buttoned up
b. Gloves
c. Mask
d. Cap, when on duty
e. Protective Shields
f. Sanitizer botlles etc
e. Shoe Covers.
3. Decontamination:
Self-decontamination: We provide disinfectant bottles containing 70% IPA to all workstations and have instructed employees to sanitize their hands frequently.
Surface decontamination: We have provided 1% Hypochlorite solution along with the decontamination protocols for the employees to wipe down their workstations regularly.
4. Staff Health Monitoring:
It is very difficult to keep tabs on every employee’s movements outside the lab. We are maintaining Automated Employee Temperature monitoring software and we have formed an Infection control committee that regularly monitor all the aspects of the safety protocols. We have trained the staff on a self-assessment form that will educate them and guide them before entering the lab incase they come from a hot spot or have been exposed to a primary contact. The staff have been requested to download the Aarogya Sethu app for self-monitoring purposes.
We also have protocols in place, in case the inevitable happens, where a staff is tested positive. We have back up teams moving in since the existing exposed team members will go into quarantine. The affected staff is guided by our own duty doctor and instructions are given to get them on the road to recovery.
All our staff are exclusively covered by the Covid Kavach insurance scheme to help protect themselves and their families in case they contract the infection.
We are taking all possible measures to prevent the transmission of COVID-19 at our workplace.
But the largest challenge is to replace the fear in the hearts of our staff with Motivation. It is of paramount significance to keep your staff motivated and give them a sense of security and reward them for their undying passion they exhibit every day!
