Development of a safety module to satisfy the requirements of regulatory agencies for hospital staff safety education.

UNLABELLED

We developed a self-administered safety module (SM) to instruct respiratory care (RC) employees in their responsibilities during emergency situations. The SM has five phases--a pretest (PRE), statement of module objectives, presentation of information in outline form, a posttest (POST), and review of the POST. This training meets the specific requirements outlined by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

METHODS

To evaluate the effectiveness of the SM, we compared test scores among three groups of employees: those with no previous exposure to safety education in the hospital setting (G1), those with exposure at other institutions (G2), and those with exposure at this institution (G3). Our goal was to equalize the POST scores among the three groups. Using a 1-way analysis of variance, we tested to find whether the PRE scores were different from one another and repeated the test for the POST scores. We tested for within-group differences, PRE vs POST, using paired t tests.

RESULTS

Previous exposure to hospital safety management was associated with significantly higher PRE scores (p < 0.001). No previous exposure was associated with the greatest improvement (POST vs PRE), although all groups experienced significant improvement (p < 0.05). The POST scores for G1 were significantly lower than those of either G2 or G3 (p < 0.001). However, they were still adequate to pass (> or = 80%).

CONCLUSION

This self-administered SM is an effective and efficient method of educating RC personnel, regardless of entry-level knowledge, in safety issues and, although the POST scores were not statistically equalized, these scores were all sufficient to pass. Further evaluation of this process will include assessment of knowledge retention among employees.