Safety First! How to Develop Safety Policies When Providing In-Home Care
Homecare providers have different considerations regarding safety policies than those who are providing care in a clinical setting. Clinicians using the Feldcare Connect referral portal most often provide services for homebound patients, which means that each clinician needs to create safety policies to keep themselves and their patients safe and healthy during treatment.
Any therapist should consider two types of personal safety when providing in-home therapy. These are:
1. Protecting one’s health.
2. Protecting one’s physical/personal safety.
Both aspects are vital and must be considered when you go into a patient’s home to provide rehabilitation.
Read the below “how-to” for creating safety policies that protect you and your patient while also following local and national safety regulations.
How to Develop Safety Policies When Providing In-Home Care
1. Make a list of hazards you anticipate encountering. Home healthcare happens in an unregulated environment. What risks might you meet in such an environment? Here is a list of just a few you can consider. You should make your own list:
- Hazardous or unclean areas.
- Protective pets or uncontrolled animals.
- Patients with opinions that they may feel more comfortable expressing within the four walls of their home.
- Grabby or handsy patients or family members.
- Malfunctioning in-home medical equipment.
- Tripping hazards or sharp edges.
- Rotting or moldy food.
- Hazardous or malodorous gasses.
Just as there are hazards you will encounter in your everyday life; you may encounter hazards and uncomfortable situations when providing in-home SLP, OT, PT, and RD services. You are serving patients in their homes, which is an uncontrolled environment.
2. Read your local and national home-healthcare safety regulations. The US Department of Labor provides home healthcare guidance with links to various resources from OSHA, NIOSH, and more. Study these and determine which standards you’d like to hold in your freelance career.
3. Armed with all of the information provided by the Department of Labor – and your personal sensibility – you can create your safety policies. Write out solutions for all hazards and safety issues you listed in step 1 above. There may be more than one solution for each danger. Some will be easier to implement than others – and some may feel more personally important to you than other solutions.
Flag anything that you feel is particularly important. Additionally, note any policies that involve the presence of other people or for which you will have to prepare in advance.
4. Rewrite your list to create the safety policies you will consistently implement. Then include a “conditional” list that may have guidelines for particular situations.
5. Implement the policies. Your policies may need some preparation. For example, you may need to stock up on medical masks, gloves, and garbage bags. Or you may need to request that any patient has a family member or other caregiver present. Or you may need to do something as simple as ensuring you have an extra pair of sturdy shoes and a first aid kit in your car.
No matter what your policies require, make sure you have the tools and have made arrangements before heading to a patient’s home.
Five Safety Complications to Consider
There will always be safety concerns that are conditional upon specific circumstances. For example, before 2020, it’s unlikely that many in-home practitioners had safety policies regarding novel respiratory viruses. However, now that we’ve lived through a pandemic, all clinics and most in-home therapists have policies relating to COVID-19.
With that in mind, we have included five safety complications to consider as you build your safety policies:
1. New and emerging COVID variants
It is safe to say that COVID variants are now a fact of life. However, different patients will demonstrate varying degrees of willingness to follow your safety guidelines while receiving services in their homes. This may cause you to draw a hard line – or you may want to include guidelines you alone will follow to protect your and patients’ health.
2. New and emerging diseases
Every year we see a new flu strain and, as COVID-19 has taught us, there is a real possibility that new illnesses will emerge over the years and decades that you are in practice. Consider how you can best protect yourself against disease. Again, this may include personal policies, or you may draw a hard line with patients. It’s up to you as you move forward with your freelance career.
3. Gender issues
Different genders are treated differently by a particular set of the population. For example, women are more likely to be subjected to off-color or “handsy” clients. If you feel your gender or gender presentation may put your safety at risk, consider policies that will protect you. You may want two people present during your patient visits. You may decide that specific behavior is a hard line for you and, if that behavior is exhibited, you will have to leave. You may need to understand all exits available in the patient’s home so that exiting rapidly is an option. This can all be made clear to the agency you are working with – before you step foot in a patient’s home.
4. Physical injury or accidents
Even if a therapist wears the most sensible shoes and has the best balance in the world, accidents happen. Write a policy that addresses what you will do if you slip and fall or otherwise hurt yourself in a patient’s home or when on a patient’s property. Consider what it would look like if you also damaged property. Creating a policy and guidelines before anything happens will provide you with certainty if a painful accident occurs.
5. Emergencies
Four kinds of emergencies can occur while working with a patient in their home.
- The patient has a medical emergency.
- A family member or other caregiver suffers a medical emergency.
- You have a medical emergency.
- The home itself becomes unsafe for human occupation.
Determine what you will do in each case beforehand. Being prepared will help you react quickly and efficiently rather than wondering what step to take in the event of an emergency.
At FeldCare Connects, we provide a referral service for clinicians and home healthcare agencies. We don’t make safety recommendations or provide safety policies. However, we hope that all of the above information will help clinicians utilizing our services to make informed policies and protect their safety as they grow their freelance therapy careers.
Reach out to FeldCare Connects to kickstart your journey in home health now! Either call us at (818) 926-9057, or go to feldcareconnects.com/clinicians
