Safety

Tip of the week: Keep late-night fire drills hush-hush

Hospital Safety Insider, May 20, 2009

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It’s well known that the Life Safety Code (LSC) and Joint Commission standard EC.02.03.03 require hospitals to conduct fire drills quarterly on every shift. Generally, those drills must include someone pulling the fire alarm.
 
However, a provision in section 19.7.1.2 in the LSC lets you forgo tripping the alarm system between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. Instead, during that period you can substitute a coded announcement in place of audible alarms. EC.02.03.03, element of performance 4 mirrors this provision.
 
The reasoning is that a blaring alarm during that period will wake up sleeping patients, which would likely result in a customer service-related flogging for drill organizers.



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