Veterinary OSHA Compliance: So Much More Than Checking a Box

OSHA safety training can be so much more than fulfilling a government mandate. With the right approach, regular staff training on safety saves money, binds teams, improves workflow, and underlines your concern for employees’ wellbeing. Here are some ways to quickly get a safety manual and training program up and running at your veterinary hospital.

In this article:

WHY OSHA Safety Training
WHAT is OSHA Safety Training
WHEN you have to provide OSHA Training
HOW do you build an OSHA Safety Program for your veterinary hospital
HOW to begin training OSHA Safety at your veterinary hospital
DOWNLOAD a free outline of a veterinary
Creative ways to teach and engage

WHY OSHA Safety Training

A lawful requirement

As an employer, you are required by law to:

Provide a workplace that is reasonably free of hazards
Provide employees the training, awareness, and tools they need (Personal Protective Equipment or PPE) to stay safe from job-related injuries
Display a poster (use link to browse free samples) alerting employees to their rights (and responsibilities!) under OSHA (Occupational Safety Hazards Act)
Have a system in place by which employers and other team members are made aware of hazards.
Information on all chemicals and medications in the building (Safety Data Sheets) and anesthetic gas risks
A regular tour of Hazards at a veterinary hospital for all existing employees and new hires.
Training for team members on how hazards are identified (colors and pictograms) and what both mean.
Post cases of workplace accidents in the workplace so that other team members can be made aware of hazards (OSHA 300 log)

Unfortunately OSHA is vague about what else you are obliged to do as an employer, a source of frustration for many veterinary office managers and owners who just want a checklist of things they can mark off to settle the matter of compliance and move on with their list of enumerable tasks, but the lack of specificity means that safety programs have the wiggle room they need to be specific for each hospital and hospital team allowing for a more effective safety program that’s more tailored to specific needs.

Much needed in an accident prone workplace

In addition to a requirement of law, safety programs just make dollars and sense for veterinary practices. Veterinary employees experience a number of job-related accidents at hospitals including slips and sprains, animal bites, cuts and bruises, and exposure to harmful pathogens and chemicals. These accidents rob employees of the ability to work, lower hospital productivity, and can result in high medical costs. To offset these costs, employers are required by law to pay for insurance, Workman’s Compensation. Typically, employers pay somewhere between 3 to 10 dollars in insurance costs for every 100 dollars they spend in payroll with the premium going higher as the practice racks up the number of reported accidents.

An excellent morale and team building venture

Safety programs are an opportunity for all hospital teams to step outside the traditional veterinary staff meeting agenda and discuss topics that might otherwise go overlooked or unaddressed

Safety training is an entirely new way for employers to communicate their appreciate for employees
Done properly, safety training provides the group an opportunity to ideate inclusively, across all employee classes and experience levels, helping to bring the team closer together.
Safety training allows the group to see work habits, systems and flow in an entirely new light increasing the likelihood that they will see opportunities for how to both improve safety and the means by which work is accomplished.

What is a Safety OSHA Safety Training in an Veterinary Hospital?

As mentioned above under a Lawful Requirement, OSHA requires employers to identify, alert, and protect employees from workplace hazards. While the specifics of this are often left vague, there are a handful of employer absolutes:

Make employees aware of their rights and responsibilities to a safe work environment through conspicuous placement of an OSHA Safety Poster.
Ensure employees have constant access to information on staying safe, usually accomplished by providing employees with a written or taped safety manual.
Alert employees of veterinary hospital dangers
- Point hazards out to employees through signage and train employees how to interpret the colors and pictograms of signage.
- Take employees on a ‘tour of hazards’ where they are walked through the workplace and physically shown potential hazards.
Train employees on how to avoid strains, sprains, bites or even things like mental health issues and potentially dangerous client interactions.
Take proactive action to reduce accidents
- Ensure employees have access to Safety Data Sheets that offer specific handling recommendations and health risks on all chemicals and medications used in the business.
- Conspicuously report accidents as a way to increase employee awareness of dangers
- Provide employees a system by which they can voice safety concerns and then making reasonable accommodations to mitigate danger.
- Provide employees Personal Protective Equipment.

When Do I Have to Provide It?

In short, as often as you believe it is needed to take every reasonable measure to keep employees safe. Industry standard is to provide all new hires a course in safety, to provide information on safety throughout the new hire training period, and to offer annual refresher courses in safety to all hospital team members.

How Do You Begin Building a Training Manual and Safety Program?

Firstly, you don’t have to build any of this from the ground up. At this point, everyone has contributed resources to creating a veterinary safety program. In addition to the links at the bottom of this article, here are some no-brainer citations that will be invaluable to you.

Tuskegee AVMA-PLIT Veterinary Safety Manual. The name says it all.
AAHA Visionaries Psychological Health and Safety Guidelines. More resources available to AAHA accredited members through the AAHA site.\

Begin Training

Gather information

Without drowning yourself in details, source fundamental pillars of your responsibilities as an employer all of which have been articulated in this article. If you’d like to review more outside information that breaks down your responsibilities into basic steps, look to the following organizations. Remember, your safety training program doesn’t have to be perfect today. It just needs to exist. With time, you will continue to learn, from OSHA, from conferences, from colleagues, from experience, and hone the content.

AAHA: If you are AAHA accredited, most of your accreditation safety requirements will put you in compliance with OSHA, but you can reach out directly to AAHA as an accredited member and ask for the additional resources that they provide.
AVMA: AVMA has exhaustively compiled information to help practices achieve OSHA compliance.
OSHA: OSHA offers risk free assistance for small businesses. Skip the solitary work searching the web for answers. Call up OSHA and schedule a free consultation with a safety expert. This individual will not report any violations, rather he or she will work with you to identify hazards and help you put together the best safety program for your specific hospital, free of charge.

Use an outline for an OSHA Safety Program to wrap your head around your training schedule

Our goal is to leverage OSHA training to reduce accidents, signal to team members that we care, and improve team work and workflow, but we also hope it improve efficiency at our hospital by offering animal handling training inside the content, by reviewing some workflow protocols inside the training, by piggybacking important information/training about animal health, animal care, and client service. To that end, use the OSHA Safety Manual Outline that I have provided to map out what your comprehensive training should include.

Consider how you will deliver the training

You have two cohorts of employees that need to be trained about safety at your practice: every new employee in a one-off basic information session about rights, hazards, protective measures, and recourse should they feel they are unsafe; and existing employees that should be reminded about safety on a regular basis (industry standard is once a year, but nothing is in stone.)

For both cohorts, I use one PP presentation, but when I’m using it for my entire, experienced team, the slides are less lecture and more jumping off points for discussion, training, group work, etc., as I believe is necessary for my crew at that time. You can purchase an OSHA training lecture for your hospital with this link.

Structure and timing of lecture

I like to think of the lecture in two-to-three sections

Presentation of the ‘why’ and employee rights and responsibilities of OSHA.
A walking tour of hazards, PPE, warning signs and cones, and accidentent reportage
Any kind of follow up discussion, quiz, or questions that can at once test retention, cement knowledge, and reward team members for successful learning.

Creative Ideas for Delivering Your OSHA Safety Training: Engagement and retention.

With 25 years of training and teaching veterinary teams,I’ve learned how to best engage teams in learning material and to foster retention. Here are some ideas specific to OSHA training.

Gamification

Safety Quizzes and Competitions: Turn safety lessons into interactive quizzes, challenges, or competitions. Employees can earn badges, points, or rewards for completing safety tasks, making learning fun and competitive.

Example: Break employees into groups of mixed classes (doctors, technicians, assistants, and CSRs), turn them loose into a treatment area labeled with bright yellow or red dots. Teams have to guess what each cautionary dot might be referring to. Is it something in the refrigerator? A warning not to leave the refrigerator door open? A concern about something inside the refrigerator. A separate, more experienced group of employees can award points to each team based on accuracy or even originality of answers.

Micro-learning Modules

Short Video Lessons: Break down safety lessons into bite-sized, visually engaging videos that employees can watch during breaks or before shifts.

Daily Safety Tips via SMS or Email: Send short, daily safety reminders or tips to employees’ phones or inboxes, reinforcing key safety principles in a non-intrusive way.

Example: Begin each day with a 10-minute huddle of all employees in the building. Briefly run through the day’s schedule and trouble shoot any foreseeable issues with the scheduled cases. Use any of the cases as a jumping off point to discuss safety. “So our 10am appointment is with Mr. Halow. Some of you know that he can be an irascible client. Who can tell me at least 1 of the 8 steps of deescalating a potentially heated client exchange? Each right answer scores you a…”

Storytelling and Scenario-Based Learning

Interactive Stories: Use storytelling to illustrate safety principles through real-life or fictional scenarios. Employees could interact with the story by making decisions that affect the outcome, learning through experience.

Testimonial Videos: Share videos of real-life incidents from employees who experienced safety breaches or near misses, creating an emotional connection and emphasizing the importance of safety protocols.

Example: “Before today’s lecture, I was talking to Suzanne who experienced a fire while working at a veterinary hospital. Suzanne, why don’t you tell us a little bit about what that was like and how your training (or lack thereof) improved the outcome of that horrible experience.”

Role-Playing and Skits

Safety Role-Playing: Have employees act out different safety scenarios, such as responding to a chemical spill or managing a fire evacuation. This can make the lesson more memorable and interactive.

Safety Comedy Skits: Light-hearted, humorous skits about common safety issues can lighten the mood while still delivering key messages about safety protocols.

Example: Break the group into mixed classes of employees. A member of each group can be nominated to pantomime a particular hazard at the hospital, then members of the other group have to guess what the hazard is. Employees have 60 seconds to guess the hazard. Groups that succeed at telegraphing what the hazard is in the designated amount of time get a point as well as the group that identifies the hazard. Once the hazard has been acted out, other groups have to change what they had planned to do so that no group can do the same hazard twice. One person decides to be fire, another attempts at being a sharp needle, a third attempts to be an autoclave, etc.

Interactive Infographics

Visual Posters and Digital Boards: Use interactive digital displays in break rooms or work areas that employees can tap on to learn more about different safety procedures, hazards, or emergency protocols.

Interactive Infographic Emails: Send employees infographics that link to short, detailed content pieces explaining safety rules.

Example: Enlist the help of the creative members of your team to create digital or print graphics that illuminate hazards and best safety practices.

Employee-led Safety Training

Peer-Led Workshops: Employees can take turns leading safety meetings, discussing safety challenges, or sharing lessons from their own experiences. Peer instruction often feels more relatable and creates a sense of ownership.

Safety Ambassadors Program: Designate employees as safety ambassadors who are responsible for encouraging safe behaviors and conducting informal safety checks.

Example: “In today’s 1 minute safety lesson, Allison, who will be celebrating her first year with us on Wednesday is going to demonstrate best practices with aerosolized cleaning products.”

Collaborative Problem-Solving

Safety Hackathons: Organize hackathons where teams work together to solve hypothetical safety problems, come up with new safety processes, or improve existing safety measures.

Safety Case Study Groups: Present groups of employees with real or hypothetical workplace safety case studies, allowing them to collaborate and come up with solutions.

Example: “Cujo is an 80lb nervous Rottweiler here for her annual exam. Break into groups and using Benjamin, Dr. Howard’s Golden Retriever, demonstrate how Cujo should be managed at every stage of the visit cycle.”

Incentivized Learning

Rewards and Recognition Programs: Reward employees who complete safety training or who practice exemplary safety behavior with certificates, bonuses, or public recognition.

Safety Bingo: Create a bingo-style game where employees can mark off safety tasks or behaviors throughout the day, with small prizes awarded for completing a row or column.

Example: Break the group into mixed classes of employees. Make a copy of your safety manual, then delete key parts. Pass out the sections of the manual and ask each group to fill in the deleted material to their best ability. List possible points for each deleted section.

Interactive 360-Degree Videos

Realistic Incident Training: Use 360-degree video footage to immerse employees in realistic safety scenarios where they can practice identifying hazards and taking the appropriate safety actions.

Example: Break the group into mixed classes of employees. Play a tape of one employee that has been followed around with a video camera. In the video, the employee subtly acts out several safety missteps. Have the groups shout out what she may be doing wrong. Reward the group that shouts out the correct answer first.