Posted By Phil Nartey
Hello I wondered if people could give me ideas concerning my assignment.

"The risks of staff sustaining MSD inherent in training and practising emergency evacuation of patients and residents are such that they constitute a valid reason for not carrying out such training."
Discuss?

I'm a manual handling advisor working in education but am also a physio and have previously been hospital based.
Generally do organisations not practice evacuation because of concerns of staff injuries, time effort or expence?

Posted By Linda Westrupp
Phil
The way I have always tackled this is to hold regular (at least 3 monthly) 'walk through' evacuations with at least one per year using dummies/weights/volunteers etc. One of the reasons for this is that the risk to vulnerable people of actually evacuating them, probably frightening them as well, is too high. We therefore weighed up the risks, talked to our local fire safety officers and came up with the walk through idea.
All staff have to be covered (including all night staff) for the 3 monthly exercise and have refresher training in ski sheet and fire extinguisher use 12 monthly.
Non-mobile people coming into care or respite are accommodated on the ground floor.
In LD Homes/Day Centres the evacuation process is made into a game for the service users as we had a two or three at one time who went and hid if the fire alarms went off, one in the bathroom (easy to find) and two hid in cupboards/wardrobes (not easy to find), this obviously worried staff. The game, however, is now enjoyed by all and evacuation can now be achieved in 1 minute 30 seconds.
You just need to make sure your risk assessments cover all aspects, and as previous responder says, only knowing the theory could be more hazardous in the event of an emergency than practising with the right supervision and equipment
Linda