#148 Tools for More Effective Safety Meetings

Preparing and conducting effective safety meetings is critical to maintaining a culture of safety in your dental practice.  Boring, ill-prepared meetings lead the team to believe their valuable time was wasted. This episode helps our listeners to prepare and conduct effective meetings that will contribute to your practice's safety and overall success.

•  12 Tips for Effective Safety Meetings: https://bit.ly/49JbHSU
• 4 Steps for Structuring Successful Safety Meetings: https://bit.ly/3SEFntC
• Safety Meetings 101: https://bit.ly/48tHKVU
• Training Requirements in OSHA Standards: https://bit.ly/49l9Kw5

                                                 https://www.thecompliancedivas.com

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:04

Welcome. I'm Leslie Cannon. I'm Mary Gavoni.

SPEAKER_02 0:09

I'm Linda Harvey. I'm Olivia Juan. And together we are the Compliance Divas. Welcome to the Compliance Divas Podcast. My name is Olivia Juan, and I'll be your moderator today. Our subject is how to conduct effective safety meetings. In light of the fact that we're dealing with labor shortages, being pressed for time, many practices functioning about 11% below capacity because we don't have enough team members. That can cut into important training times and including effective safety meetings. So we're going to talk to the compliance divas about some tips that you can incorporate into your practices on making meetings as effective as possible. As the compliance divas, we bring clarity and simplicity to compliance by navigating regulatory compliance to keep you on course. Please subscribe to the compliance divas podcast through your favorite podcast channel, or you can visit our website at thecompliance divas.com. Any resources that we mentioned during the podcast can be found on our website. You may also submit questions to support at the ComplianceDivas.com. And while you're on the site or on your podcast channel, please, if you don't mind, give us a review. We'd love that. So effective safety meetings. Effective safety meetings gets your team involved and engaged. And the goal is that they walk away from these meetings feeling like their time was well spent and that we've provided important safety reminders that are fresh in their minds, as well as grasping new things that we may have introduced. I'd like to start with Mary and focus in, Mary, on the time factor. Just how do we allocate time with everybody so busy? And wondering also if you have any daily tips about holding them weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually. Can you relate to us some of your ideas and the experience you've had over your career?

SPEAKER_00 2:34

Sure thing, Olivia. And I think this is a great topic because so many times teams just think of safety training as sort of an afterthought, or somebody mentions that it's coming up and the eyes start rolling, or people think of excuses not to participate. Time allocation is a challenge because it, if it's done during the work hours, which is what OSHA requires, then that could mean having downtime in the schedule. And what I see happen a lot of times is that patients who are not scheduled, who are emergency, sort of get woven into that time scheduled for the training. And then that takes away from everybody participating in the training, or many times the doctors think that they don't need to be there for the training. And everyone on the team, whether they're admin staff or clinical teams and the doctor themselves. So allocating an amount of time, maybe two hours or two to four hours if it's uh an annual training, if you do it quarterly. And I'm starting to transition my clients over to doing quarterly training because a lot of information can change within that um one year time of when we last perhaps did um did training. The other thing you can do in terms of minimizing the time necessary is look at your morning meeting. Are there safety tips? Anything you can review about infection prevention or chemical safety or PPE every day in the morning meeting? And you don't necessarily have to document that every single day, but you could perhaps do a weekly documentation and say, here's the discussion we talked about, um, or here are the tips we talked about Monday through Friday, and keep a record of what you talked about. So, or once a week, if you have a team meeting, allocate time, put some time on the agenda for safety topics and making sure that you do stay on time, that you don't go off on tangents. And if people are in disagreement about certain things, I just did that with a team training this morning where there was huge disagreement about um hepatitis, then we need to go and gather information, stop that discussion, gather some information, bring it back for another discussion at a later time. And if you work with someone outside your practice to do your annual training, for example, then get on their schedule ahead of time, just like you schedule recare patients ahead of time, get on their schedule so you can stay on track for that amount of time. And the other thing that gets overlooked a lot is new higher training. When you are onboarding new employees, if it's someone who's been experienced in dentistry prior to coming to your practice, and they've had training before, then you could give an abbreviated training that is limited to the specific things you do in your practice. How does your sterilizer work? What's your schedule for maintenance and what are the products that you're using for disinfecting treatment rooms, those kinds of things that are very specific to your practice? But someone who is absolutely new to dentistry needs to have that comprehensive training before they start performing at-risk functions. So if that's a clinical team member, then before they go into the op, they need to have their safety training.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

Great points, Mary. So you've said a few things that are really important. And one is allocating the time. So that's a good thing to employ in their practices, making sure it's on the books. And I also like how you elaborated staying on time and not overlooking annual training sessions and making sure new hires are trained. So really good, excellent points, Mary. Linda, how would written agenda be helpful?

SPEAKER_01 7:05

Olivia, that's a good question. I think overall, when we when we think about safety meetings, they are a critical operations component for any successful practice or organization. So I love Mary's idea of carving out the time in advance because if you don't make time for it, it's not going to happen. And having a written agenda is even more meaningful because, as Mary mentioned, and you did too, about staying on time. Now you have almost like a checklist, if you will, uh of things you want to talk about during the meeting so that it doesn't turn into a gripe session or event session. It turns into a positive experience where you're bringing opportunities for improvement, you're bringing updates. And if it's in writing, maybe you're doing a little bit of training, some training on a new piece of equipment or a new chemical that's been introduced into the practice, and you need to have a training roster for that. So having it written serves multiple purposes. One of the things that I've done over the years for just something simple to start with is if they're floundering and not sure how to start with this, if you've been working with a practice management consultant and they've given you a team agenda meeting for the items you're going to talk about for that monthly or quarterly meeting, simply add safety and compliance at that on that agenda. Otherwise, I like the fact that compliance and safety can have its own agenda because there's different things that we need to talk about. And we don't want them to be glossed over or lost. But I like the idea of making it fun, Olivia. And I think, you know, there's not time to play games a lot of times, but something to fun about it, whether somebody bringing a quote for the day or a motivational saying. I know some local inventory surgery centers that have what's called a good catch program. And what that means is that the nurses are continually on lookout for opportunities for improvement that could catch the situation before it becomes harmful to a patient, such as a piece of equipment that's broken or some medication that's not labeled properly, just whatever the situation is, it's a good catch. Are there good catches that we have in the office? Oh, we almost forgot to do the testing on this piece of equipment. Hopefully they're not forgetting the spore testing, but there could be some check that maybe almost, you know, that's flipping their mind and or coming close to forgetting it, and you have a good catch. Or it's about training and you're helping the new team members to understand what they need to do to be on track to help stay concurrent with all the compliance areas. So I think it's multifaceted, but definitely having a written agenda helps keep everybody on track from the time-wise and from the topics. And that way you're moving in an organized fashion to the topics that needs to be that need to be discussed. And then I'd also like to add that have the team built in an expectation for the team to have a round robin at the end. How would you rate today's meeting? Or was there something you want to talk about? We didn't get to talk about that we can either put to the next topic, um, next meeting, pardon me, or can we add it for a couple of minutes today? So that round robin creates an expectation that everybody's going to participate. And um, the folks that have the maybe the strongest personality don't take over the meeting. So, Olivia, back to you.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

That's a great point, Linda. And it does keep everybody on course, otherwise, we might be spending time learning about what each other did over the weekend and not walking away with important safety topics. And I find that even helpful in my own practices. I mean, we I meet with both my practices each morning and we do go by an agenda, and I let in my consulting practice, I let another team meeting, team member lead the meeting, and we have each person speak. Otherwise, you know, some people will get quiet, but each person has to speak to discuss things we're anticipating of that day, of the week, and then it keeps us all unified, especially with so many of them working remotely. So I love how that written agenda can be helpful, Linda. Mary, I know that our diva leslie wanted to talk to us about documentation. Can you share some thoughts about documentation if necessary?

SPEAKER_00 11:10

I have lots of thoughts about documentation. The one thing that um we have learned over the years is that documentation is everything to OSHA. In other words, if it's not documented, OSHA will assume that you haven't done whatever it is, training or um putting together protocols and so forth. So OSHA has some specific guidelines in the bloodborne pathogen standard that say what needs to be included in the training documentation. So the name of the instructor and their credentials. So are you working with a consultant? Is it another team member? Is it the practice administrator? Is it the doctor? Who is in attendance and what is their position or their designation in the practice? In other words, are they the assistant, the doctor, the hygienist, whoever, and then they need to sign. Um, I always ask people to try to print as legibly as they can. So if I have rosters and I need to vouch for their um continuing education or for their participation, I can actually read those names. But it's very, very important that not only does it say, you know, Mary Gavoni, dental assistant or hygienist, and then I sign. And OSHA says that training records should be kept for at least three years. And I don't think there's really any reason to go through and purge those training records. I would, if you're having everyone sign in on a paper form, then scan that document and save it electronically in a folder. So then you've got a good long history. In case you did have an OSHA inspection, um, I would want to show that I did my annual training from now until the end of time to prove that I was fulfilling my requirements. So we do get a lot of questions about who is qualified to do the training. And you don't necessarily have to have specialized safety training or a credential. You can be the practice owner, you can be a team member, but you do have to understand what the material that you're presenting to the team. So you have to be at least a few steps ahead of that team. But it also could be someone who is a consultant, um, someone perhaps who's even an OSHA outreach trainer, but that's not a requirement for training. It's a great um asset for someone to have that credential, but it's not required.

SPEAKER_02 13:50

That's great information, Mary. Documentation is key, proving that you did it. So, I mean, even if you ordered a new product, if it's 10 minutes of training and what PPE is and how to dispose of it, and and so forth. But getting everyone involved is important. So, as I mentioned, you might call on different ones to add to the meeting content, or even sometimes incorporating games, as Linda alluded to, might make it more enjoyable. Or even I talked to someone recently about putting together a poster board of pictures. So maybe there's something that's deficient in the practice. They could make some photos and glue the print them and glue the photos to a poster board to make some visuals or put it in a PowerPoint. And taking turns presenting is key because sometimes we could lose our shy people to the personalities that are stronger and more outgoing, and overlook the fact that even these shy individuals have valuable pearls of wisdom to offer to our group. So we want to preserve the time and let everyone participate. Are there any additional thoughts from the divas that you would like to share, Mary?

SPEAKER_00 15:09

I just had a thought. I have a client that I'm working with who's really trying to improve patient customer service. And she's assigned the team members to do some outside reading on about customer service and those types of things. And they have this system where everyone can share or not share a special tip in their morning meeting. If they do share a tip that they believe is worth investigating and perhaps um incorporating into the practice, then they get a chip and they put the and everybody gets a different color chip and they put the chips in a jar. And then at the end of the month, the person who has the most of their own color chips in the jar gets some kind of a gift card, nothing big, but just some kind of a reward. So it encourages participation, and it's definitely encouraged people to do their reading homework. So I think it could easily happen. What you know, go through the um CDC website, go through some of the news feeds and see what's happening. There's, you know, reports on flu and measles and all kinds of things going on. So there's something that someone could share and create a little competition around it. And everybody benefits because they get informed about what's happening.

SPEAKER_02 16:37

That's a great idea, Mary. I love it.

SPEAKER_01 16:40

What about you, Linda? I just want to compliment Mary as well, Olivia, because it brings out the shy individuals. You know, you may not be comfortable bringing it up right away, but it helps them to come out of their shell. And I'm I'm sure one-on-one or in small groups at lunch, they're not shy. Everybody's talkative. But when you put somebody in a formal meeting, then they um their shy tendencies may tend to take over. So this is a great way that people can read a book, the staff can read a book, they can participate and find these ideas, and it's like a suggestion jar almost. And so I think it's a great idea. And then the tokens, that's a perfect thing because in the end, you just don't want your time to get chipped away during the meetings and planning for those and planning for safety. So I think if you can add that in, it's a great idea.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

So I agree. And one of the things that we started doing is taking minutes. So I have assigned one team member to take very brief bullet point minutes and email it to the entire team because inevitably, you know, maybe a part-time person wasn't there for that particular meeting, or maybe someone was sick that day. And this way everyone stays in the circle of discussion and you don't have anyone saying, Well, nobody told me that. So maybe that will help promote continuity. Mary, are there other thoughts that you could share with us?

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Sure. I think anytime we can get team members or doctors involved in participation activities during the training, let's go check the eyewash station or um who checked the fire extinguisher last, anything that there is, or let's plan a safety drill if you have time for that. But um there's so many things you could use that time for that will make it memorable to everyone. Um, I walk into practices a lot of times where if I ask them where is your eyewash station, half the time they don't even know, let alone know how to operate it. So participatory types of activities are great learning experiences.

SPEAKER_02 18:42

I agree. Recently I attended the OSAP boot camp in Atlanta and I wanted to share with the divas. I appreciate how many people came up to me and said that they are following the podcast and learning tips, and they're able to share content with their practices, their clients. And so we really appreciate everyone that's tuning in to the weekly podcast. Because as the compliance divas, we bring clarity and simplicity to compliance by navigating regulatory compliance to keep you on course. Please submit your questions to support at the compliancedevas.com. And as always, any resources that we mention will be available in the show notes. So thank you once again for tuning into how to conduct effective safety meetings.