Risk Management | Ececutive Summary

Risk is, and forever will be, synonymous with serving the public.

Foodborne illness is just one more factor to manage, but one that must be addressed more aggressively - sufficient to match up with the aggressive lawyers, armed with DNA technology and poised to defend any one of your customers. A similar problem is faced by health care professionals with the growing problem of hospital acquired (nosocomial) illness. These threats are growing and are much greater than the slips, falls and chipped teeth issues that have dominated the agendas of many risk management departments.

After very successful rounds of investment in temperature control and surface disinfection, hand hygiene is now the biggest threat to keeping customers and patients safe while in our care. Controlling equipment has proven to be considerably easier than controlling hand hygiene behaviours. Motivation, training and employee turnover become factors.

We must now learn to control a process that has never been under control. Ignoring hand hygiene as a priority is easy until faced with a crippling outbreak of illness sourced from your operations. It is often trivialized, feeling that there is nothing that can be done, " we are doing everything we can." Some will correctly say the real problem is keeping ill employees away from work and keeping ill customers at home (i.e. cruise ship passengers). Managing situations where you are not in total control of all the variables is never easy but it is a reality we must and can address

This intangible hand hygiene factor, with its lack of standards, must be met head-on with the same rigour and level of professionalism as any major process or issue.

Don't be discouraged by these three realities:

1. The risk will never be zero,
2. The risk is rising in spite of the advances of science and
3. Ill employees and ill customers are a constant threat to the health of your business.

Despite these realities significant and meaningful actions can be taken to dramatically lower the risk for disease transmission in food and health care environments. While zero risk may not be achievable high risk situations can be minimized.