• EC: – Clarifications and Expectations: Safety Champions Making health care safety everyone’s business[®] [REF: EOC, JCSC, LDR, SFT, StEd] EC News February 2013, Vol 16, #2, Pg 2

This latest offering in the Clarifications & Expectations series offers an interesting strategy for incrementally spreading safety awareness, expertise and investment… through a Safety Champions Program.  In this program, your Safety Officer (or equivalent) would oversee a selected and specially trained group of Safety Champions who would advocate, demonstrate and promote safety awareness in their work area.  Although they would be expected to take advantage of any opportunity for this, a key vehicle for their efforts would be their participation in safety environmental rounds/tours (as per EC.04.01.01, EPs 12–14).  After being trained, a group of Safety Champions would serve for a designated term (e.g., 1 year) and then be replaced with a new representative from each work area.  In this way, over time, all/most staff would serve in this role and help evolve the culture of safety-consciousness.  
Tip: Review the listing of potential training topics for Safety Champions on page 11 and invite leadership to consider implementing the program.  Note the full article is also available in this month’s Perspectives.