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When it comes to surveyors, first impressions reign

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, September 19, 2007

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How your facility maintains its environment says a lot about its operations. The minute a surveyor walks through the door, his or her goal is to make a professional, informed evaluation of your policies and procedures and file a report indicating his or her findings. But that impression doesn't start when the administrator sits down with the surveyors and prepares to give them what they need. With so much of the difference between avoidable and unavoidable accidents hinging on perception, you do yourself no favors if your care environment seems to be in arrears.

What might surveyors think about your environment of care if they notice one or more of the following? These are general examples, but one or more of them can give a surveyor an instant flavor of the environment you keep:

• There are cigarette butts all around the front door and other outdoor locations where staff members take breaks.
• An extension cord to light the front lobby Christmas tree is sticking out, inches from the doorway.
• There is a patient sitting in his or her wheelchair in the front lobby, leaning forward as if he or she were about to fall.
• There is a cacophony of noise when the surveyor walks in, and the first thing he or she hears when approaching the front desk is two staff members talking about their weekend partying.

To get more information, go to Briefings on Long-Term Care (BLTC). For the cost of just three stories, you can get the entire September issue of BLTC. Click here to choose between the PDF and HTML versions for just $30. Subscribers to the online version of BLTC have free access to this article. Subscribers to the print newsletter can find this article in their September issue.

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