• E-mail
• Print
• RSS
• Reprints

Risk assessments: The catch-all for hazard analysis

Briefings on Infection Control, September 1, 2010

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login.

“Do a risk assessment.” That’s the answer most frequently heard in response to questions regarding safety or IC. 

The risk assessment is a simple but effective tool to evaluate any number of risks stemming from worker protection, facility design requirements, or patient safety. But for whatever reason, the risk assessment elicits panic and fear among safety officers or IPs that may not be familiar with the process, the documentation, or the analysis of risks. 

“When they have some sort of situation or issue and I tell them they need to do a risk assessment, and the dread that comes over their face, you almost swear I was killing their first-born kid,” says Earl Williams, HSP-M, safety specialist at Advocate Health Care in Normal, IL. “And oftentimes they don’t seem to understand the difference between a risk assessment and a risk analysis.”

However, the risk assessment is evaluated in all areas of the hospitals during a Joint Commission survey, and it’s required annually for evaluation of your IC program.  

Although the assessment itself is a strong, reliable tool, Williams believes it signifies an area of healthcare that is weak, in the sense that some facilities do not use the assessment appropriately—assuming they use it at all. 

But once you know the basics of a risk assessment, the rest follows easily, and the same procedure can be repeated with varying considerations, so you’ll be able to determine the severity of risks present in every part of your facility and simultaneously adhere to the standards that apply to your facility while developing a workable plan of action.

Where to begin

Whether you are conducting a risk assessment for employee protection measures during a certain procedure or a particular infection risk to your patient population, the assessment provides a unique look at your individual facility, says Libby Chinnes, RN, BSC, CIC, consultant and owner of IC Solutions, LLC, in Mount Pleasant, SC.

“A risk assessment is really a neat tool because it lets us look at how our organizations are unique,” Chinnes says. “It looks at what is different about my organization from your organization, whether they are two hospitals or two ambulatory surgery centers or whatever.”

It’s also an objective review of your procedures with the safety of the healthcare worker in mind, says John Schaefer, MSF, CIH, HEM, CPEA, associate director of health safety and environment for the Johns Hopkins University, Hospital and Health System in Baltimore. 

“A risk assessment is the outside look of the work environment,” Schaefer says. “Very honestly, it’s the third person looking from outside to see exactly what is going on.”

A risk assessment will serve as a basis for your annual infection prevention and control plan by aiding in identifying your at-risk populations and procedures and helping to focus your surveillance efforts on the most important risks in your facility.

Often, the addition of a new service or procedure to your institution will affect your risk assessment, says Chinnes. 

“Let’s say I’m in a long-term acute care facility, and I see a lot of longer-term very chronically sick patients, and now we’re adding two services: bronchoscopy and hemodialysis,” Chinnes says. “This actually happened in a center I was helping. That’s going to greatly change the nature of the patients you are seeing. You’re going to get different patients and procedures, some at higher risk of infection with these services.”

You may also want to take a close look at elevated risks for certain infections. If you have seen recent outbreaks of MRSA, for example, your risk assessment may push MRSA prevention efforts higher on your list of priorities.

This is an excerpt from a member only article. To read the article in its entirety, please login.

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive
• Reprints / Permissions