Question

Case study

Liam is the facility manager at a residential aged care facility. The service provides independent living units, community nursing and home care packages, day centre visits, respite care, palliative care, and dementia specific care, to older people. Liam is responsible for managing legal and ethical compliance within the organisation, ensuring the facility’s AHPRA registration and accreditation are up to date, and maintaining collaborative and effective relationships with all multidisciplinary team members. Lucy, a casual nurse, comes to work with symptoms of gastroenteritis. She knows that she should have stayed home but she knew the service was going to be short staffed. After carrying out her duties for three hours, Lucy talks to her manager, Janice, in the tea room. She explains her symptoms and that she is feeling weak and unsteady. Janice tells her to go home immediately as gastroenteritis is highly contagious and could pose a severe health risk to residents and other staff members. That evening, four residents develop gastroenteritis. Liam has left work for the day but receives a phone call from the night nursing unit manager alerting him to the spread of virus (herein called ‘the incident’). Liam responds immediately by ordering the service into lock down. One of the residents who contracted the virus is taken to hospital for treatment and is in a critical condition. Liam organises refresher training for all staff with regard to duty of care. Liam receives an incident report form from Janice regarding Lucy’s illness. He thinks that because of Lucy’s failure to comply with organisational work health and safety procedures relating to infection control, the organisation has breached its duty of care to provide residents with a safe and healthy care environment.

QUESTION-

16. Describe how Liam could re-distribute the organisation’s work health and safety procedures to ensure an issue like this does not happen again.

17. Describe how Liam could evaluate work practices for non-compliance on an ongoing basis.

18. Describe a modification Liam could implement to ensure all team members understand the risks of coming to work with a contagious disease.

Answer 1

Q.16

• Good work design is put into practice.
• A program of workplace inspections is in place.
• Incidents are investigated and reported.
• Identification and monitoring of hazards and emerging risk are in place.
• First aid arrangements and health monitoring appropriate to the health risks at the workplace.

Q.17

• Proof that health and safety policies and procedures are documented, implemented and maintained.
• A policy which focuses on workplace health and safety is central to all operations and suits the nature and scale of your organisation’s risks.
• Procedures are in place which set out the steps workers should follow to perform specific work activities safely and meet organisational policies and legislation.
• Emergency management and response procedures are in place.
• Policies and procedures are available to all staff, such as on staff noticeboards and intranet site.

Q.18

Proper counselling and explaining the hazards of carelessness to the staff.

If necessary there should be implementation of penalty on the staff and legal process