How can we minimize the risks associated with an employee wearing an external medical device in production?
Hello,
We are a SQF certified food manufacturing facility and it has come to my attention that an employee wears an external blood sugar monitor to control his diabetes. He works in the production area but is not involved with batching. He is, however, involved in cleaning tanks and packaging finished product. His monitor is held onto his arm by a bandage.
In my opinion this poses a food safety issue if the bandage or device falls into the tank while he is doing sanitation. However we could clearly identify this and immediately conduct another cleaning and sanitation on the affected tank and visually inspect the tank prior to running another batch. To minimize this risk I want to propose having him wear an arm sleeve wrap on top of the monitor/bandage to ensure the device does not fall off while he is in the production area.
If anyone has had experience with this or something similar, then what did you do? How can we minimize the risk associated with an employee using a medical device. Also, can i even request for him to wear an arm sleeve? Will this mess up any of his blood sugar readings?
Please help!
A) is she wearing short sleeves?? Are you speaking of the small round disk???
B) be very careful when asking an employee with any medical device to adjust anything---legally a very slippery slope
By bandage, are you meaning a tensor bandage? The likelyhood of this coming loose without the employee noticing are marginal
I firmly believe this is a non issue that you shouldn't invest anymore time or energy in
Hello,
We are a SQF certified food manufacturing facility and it has come to my attention that an employee wears an external blood sugar monitor to control his diabetes. He works in the production area but is not involved with batching. He is, however, involved in cleaning tanks and packaging finished product. His monitor is held onto his arm by a bandage.
In my opinion this poses a food safety issue if the bandage or device falls into the tank while he is doing sanitation. However we could clearly identify this and immediately conduct another cleaning and sanitation on the affected tank and visually inspect the tank prior to running another batch. To minimize this risk I want to propose having him wear an arm sleeve wrap on top of the monitor/bandage to ensure the device does not fall off while he is in the production area.
If anyone has had experience with this or something similar, then what did you do? How can we minimize the risk associated with an employee using a medical device. Also, can i even request for him to wear an arm sleeve? Will this mess up any of his blood sugar readings?
Please help!
So what is the OSHA viewpoint on such issues ?
My suggestion would be to ask the employee to do a visual check at the end of each shift to verify the monitor is still in place. Be sure the employee is trained and document the training. This would be much easier than wearing a bandage over top which could create more foreign material or be a source of discrimination.
A method for ensuring the device and fastener can't come off unnoticed would be the approach I'd take. We've learned in recent months that you can ask questions about medical issues, especially if they affect food safety, but in private, make sure the employee knows why you are asking, how it potentially affects food safety, that any information will be kept confidential and that they don't have to answer the questions. As far as that last one, you already know there is a device so that's a given, have the employee come up with what works for them and if it satisfies your risk assessment, go with it. This is very similar to medical alert necklaces: It's not jewelry and you can't ask them to remove it so make sure it's taped down or contained inside their shirt. You might also think about discreetly finding out if they have an insulin pump as well, that's a chemical introduction risk if they do.