hospital booties – Shoe Inn Machinations

Hospital Employee Safety: Slips and Falls

Hospitals are one of the most hazardous places to work according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). In fact, hospital injuries occurred at almost twice the rate for private industry as a whole in 2011. In terms of lost-time rates, it is more hazardous to work in a hospital than in manufacturing or construction.

Hospitals have unique risks (lifting/repositioning patients, needlesticks), slippery surfaces, and a variety of other hazards. Also, some caregivers feel it is their ethical duty to put their patients’ safety and health before their own.

For 2011, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that fully one quarter (25%) of all hospital caregiver injuries was from slips, trips and falls! Considering the slippery floors in hospitals and the body positioning and movements that caregivers employ in performing their jobs, this statistic is somewhat understandable. Injuries from slipping can impact employees’ ability to do their jobs, and result in decreased productivity, lost workdays, and expensive worker compensation claims.

As a result, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has published a guide for Slip, Trip, and Fall Prevention for Healthcare Workers. Though the guide does not address shoe covers, hospital EH&S/safety/risk managers can go the extra mile by implementing the Shoe Inn automatic shoe cover dispensing system with non-slip/high-traction shoe covers. Shoe Inn can help keep your employees safe by reducing slips and falls associated with putting shoe covers on as well as using superior traction shoe covers.

Who Needs an Automatic Shoe Cover Dispenser?

An automatic shoe cover dispenser, who needs that? When it comes to putting on shoe covers, you don’t think much about it — you just do what you’ve always done, sitting on a bench or balancing on one leg while trying to put a shoe cover on the other foot (what we call the “bootie hop”). Sounds simple, but for many people it is not. If you find it difficult to bend over and tie your shoes or to balance on one leg, then you know how challenging it can be to put shoe covers on. Quite frankly, most people who have to wear shoe covers despise putting them on. Also consider workplace injuries happening during the process of putting them on — they do happen. In fact, the “bootie hop” is a worker’s comp claim waiting to happen. Last but not least, what about the bottleneck that is created when you have a lot of people who need to put them on at the same time? Shoe Inn can help alleviate all of these issues. Shoe Inn automatic shoe cover dispensers are ideal for use in a variety of environments such as manufacturing and food processing plants, laboratories and clean rooms, medical and healthcare facilities, and anywhere else people need to put shoe covers on faster, easier, safer and cleaner. There is no doubt that you will benefit from the ease of use, time savings, and added safety from using Shoe Inn automatic shoe cover dispensers.

Importance of Using Shoe Covers

Have you ever considered what is on the bottom of your shoes? Besides things you can see, such as grease, oil, gum, mud, leaves, feces, etc., there are the countless things you cannot see, like germs, bacteria, mold, and viruses. All of these things walk with us everywhere we go, from the house to the car to the parking lot to the building to the lab or production area to the bathroom to the dining area and back again. How many other places do we go, like gas stations and public parks, picking up things on our shoes all along the way and transporting them where they are unwelcome?

As a result, many industries and settings require the use of shoe covers to maintain sanitary or sterile conditions, prevent contamination, limit the spread of infections, comply with health codes, etc. A review of the literature turned up several key findings such as the following:

“In this study, the authors subjected six occupied rodent holding rooms in their animal research facility to three conditions: use of disinfectant mats; use of shoe covers; and no disinfectant mats or shoe covers. The authors took bacterial culture samples from the rooms under each condition. There was no significant difference in the mean number of colony forming units (CFUs) cultured when the disinfectant mats or shoe covers were used. However, the mean number of CFUs obtained was significantly lower when either disinfectant mats or shoe covers were used than when neither was used. These results suggest that using disinfectant mats or disposable shoe covers may reduce the bacterial load on rodent holding room floors.”[1]

“We recommend that gloves and footwear worn by employees who handle RF-RTE foods or who work in areas where RF-RTE are processed or exposed be made of impermeable material, in good repair, easily cleanable or disposable (emphasis added), and used only in RF-RTE areas.”[2]

“Health care workers who handle hazardous drugs are at risk of skin rashes, cancer and reproductive disorders. NIOSH recommends that employers provide appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) to protect workers who handle hazardous drugs in the workplace…Use hair and shoe covers constructed of coated materials to reduce the possibility of particulate or microbial contamination in clean rooms and other sensitive areas.”[3]

Based on the above, it is clear that using disposable shoe covers is a credible and recommended method in a variety of situations and controlled environments.

[1] Allen KP, Csida T, Leming J, Murray K, Thulin J. Efficacy of Footwear Disinfection and Shoe Cover Use in an Animal Research Facility, U.S. National Library of Medicine, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20305633

[2] US Food and Drug Administration, Guidance for Industry: Control of Listeria monocytogenes in Refrigerated or Frozen Ready-To-Eat Foods, Section XI, Paragraph IV

[3] Personal Protective Equipment for Health Care Workers Who Work with Hazardous Drugs, https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/wp-solutions/2009-106/pdfs/2009-106.pdf