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Keeping up with the signs in and around your facility

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, May 12, 2006

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Knowing which signs your hospital needs and making them stand out is important, says Patrick C. Wade, MUS, CPP, CHPA, manager of facilities at Region 4 Healthcare Partner's Medical Group in Long Beach, CA.

Aside from changing signs due to information changes, consider changing current signs that could be confusing or worded incorrectly or might not stand out enough.

"The wording on your signs should be short and as simple as possible," says Corey Hart, security manager at Cedar-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. "Put [signs] in places where they're easily noticeable and relevant to their message."

Word your signs in a positive manner, Wade says. For example, have signs that say, "Staff only" instead of "No patients allowed."

You also don't need to be specific with certain signs. Your staff should know where the employee lounge or locker room is, so there's no need to write, "Women's locker room" on a sign when you can just write, "Staff only" and cut the risk of making it a target.

To learn three more tips for creating proper signs at your facility, go to Briefings on Hospital Safety (BOHS). For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire May issue of BOHS. Click here to choose between the PDF and HTML versions for just $30. Subscribers to the online version of BOHS have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter can find this article in their May issue.

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