Interaction of Health Care Worker Health and Safety on Patient Health and Safety

CME/MOC: 1.5
TRACK: Management and Administration in OEM

Todd Hohn, CSP, Pacific Gas and Electric Company, San Francisco, CA
T. Warner Hudson, MD, FACOEM, FAAFP, UCLA Health System and Campus, Los Angeles, CA
E. Andrew Kapp, PhD, CSP, CHMM, Underwriters Laboratories, Inc., Northbrook, IL
Ronald R. Loeppke, MD, MPH, FACOEM, FAAP, US Preventive Medicine, Inc., Brentwood, TN
Robert K. McLellan, MD, MPH, FACOEM, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH

There is growing agreement that the health and safety of patients is inextricably linked to the health and safety of health care workers. Therefore, healthc are employers need to put a new emphasis on ensuring the health and safety of their own workers. It requires striving to achieve greater parity of resources, alignment of workplace incentives, institutional commitment, and a new focus on accountability for healthy and safe employee environments beginning with senior leadership. ACOEM and Underwriters Laboratories, Inc., convened a summit to identify recommendations for both how best to integrate worker and patient health and safety programs and how to evaluate the effectiveness of these programs. This session will review these recommendations and provide examples from hospital and health care systems to demonstrate how some employers are beginning to construct models that promote this new vision for health care worker safety and wellness. This session was organized by the Health and Productivity Special Interest Section.