Safety

Selecting your decontamination team

Emergency Management Alert, December 20, 2004

When you select a team of people in the hospital who will conduct decontamination, organize and create shifts among staff at the hospitals.

Keep in mind that you will also need staff to continue work in the hospital. "You have to have staff in place who you can pull away from their daily operations," says Gene Ryan, deputy district chief for special operations and hazardous materials coordinator for the Chicago Fire Department. "The challenge is that many hospitals are understaffed."

To solve this problem, officials at Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix are considering training their ancillary personnel, like security and maintenance staff, to conduct decontamination, says Beth Heinrich, the hospital's director of occupational medicine and environmental safety.

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