OSHA applies to every practice, even with one employee! Learn essential bloodborne pathogen protocols, proper laundering, documentation, PPE, and staff training to keep your practice compliant and protected.
Referenced Links:
Do you have to throw away soiled gowns?
What about laundering gowns with blood (even a little)
Statusfi for ICS Members (use your ICS login credentials & yes, it is free with your membership)
Advertisement
Transcript:
We had a member reach out earlier this week and ask questions about OSHA, and they ended up having a patient ultimately get a little blood on a gown related to acupuncture, and it made me really realize that we probably needed to do a quick update for everyone in regards to OSHA. Many times our doctors look at OSHA, and they say, “Well, I don’t do any needle pricks. I don’t do acupuncture. I don’t, I don’t have blood incidents, so OSHA doesn’t apply to me. Let me first tell you that, actually, the bloodborne pathogen side of OSHA is one small piece of the entire gambit, the entire world of things OSHA-related that does apply to your office and to your practice.
If you have a single employee, you’ve got quite a few things that you have to deal with in regard to OSHA. You need to make sure that you have everything documented, your procedures nailed down. You need to have your safety data sheets and many other things. But also, when it comes to bloodborne pathogens, sometimes we just think about those things that commonly introduce blood into the practice. However, as we begin to talk about OSHA and the requirements surrounding OSHA and bloodborne pathogens, it could be any number of different things. If someone gets a bloody nose or ends up, you know, with some sort of a, you know, they have a split or cut on their hand, or something along those lines, where ultimately it’s possible for one of your employees to get blood on them in some fashion or handle material that has blood. You know, maybe somebody gets a small bloody nose, and they get it on the face paper on your adjustment table, or who knows what the case is, right? But any of those could be at play, and you need to make sure that you have your OSHA procedures lined up for this.
So the question was really, what do we do with the gowns if somebody happens to get a little bit of blood, just a small amount, on a gown? As it’s related, do we need to discard the gown? The short answer is no, you don’t. You can actually go through a proper process of laundering that follows OSHA guidelines, and there are actually guidelines out there put out by the CDC specifically related to OSHA and related to bloodborne pathogens. So you just need to have your procedures lined up for what happens if.
And so the biggest lesson for today is OSHA applies to you. Make sure that you have your OSHA procedures in place. Make sure that you have and you’re covering bloodborne pathogens, even if you say that it’s not common in your practice; it could be common. So you need to have those procedures down, and you need to train. So you need to have the proper PPE for your employees that handle things like that. You need to document all of your procedures. If you have an exposure incident, you need to make sure that you follow those procedures and document those procedures or those incidents as well, specific to the requirements by OSHA. And then the biggest thing is this: you have to train all of your employees on all of these things related to OSHA. That is your responsibility, and so know that all of the all of these things apply to you.
I’m going to drop a link down there also for our ICS members. Don’t forget you have access to Statusfi, which is your compliance dashboard. One of the major sections in Statusfi deals with OSHA and will help you walk through that. So I would encourage you to jump over and do that as well, because it handles more than just OSHA; it also handles HIPAA, and it handles more than OSHA and HIPAA. It also helps you with the Americans with Disabilities Act, with the state requirements, with your employment requirements, all related to compliance. All of these crazy things that you have to do to make sure that you’re compliant, and your practice, Statusfi, will help you walk through that. But the biggest thing is this: know that OSHA applies to you, even if you have a single employee. We’ll catch you next week.
