Learning, teaching, coaching, training, rearing, tutoring
are all synonyms for educating. Whether
it’s teaching our children to ride a bike or read a book, coaching or mentoring
a colleague, training new staff or retraining current staff, everyone everyday
imparts knowledge to others in some way.
My favorite definition of education is:
The act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge,
developing the powers of reasoning and judgement and generally of preparing oneself
or others intellectually for mature life.
Certainly, as an educator myself, I hope that with each webinar
or seminar I give I am successful in imparting the knowledge I have on the use
of disinfectants so that my audience can acquire the ability to reason and
stand firm on the decision they have made with respect to their choice of a
disinfectant. This is also why I am so
passionate about ensuring we develop a training program that ensures our staff
have the knowledge and competencies to do their job. If they do not, we all lose. As a manager, we lose because our staff are
under performing. Our staff lose because
they do not have the resources to effectively do their job. Our clients (students, patients, etc) lose
because they are now exposed to potentially dangerous pathogens that can make
them sick or worse, kill them.
We CANNOT expect our staff to know how to correctly use the
products and tools to do their jobs unless we TEACH them how to use
them. Certainly in some aspects of our life, such as learning to walk or
talk or in my case learning to swim (my mother quite literally “threw” me in
the pool as was the rage for teaching babies when I was 4 months old), the
concept of THE SINK OR SWIM SQUAD can be an effective learning process. For
driving, practicing medicine, ensuring public safety through public health - and I dare say for using cleaning and
disinfecting chemicals - a formal, comprehensive and reproducible education
system needs to be in place. Isn’t that the concept behind Young Drivers
of Canada or the myriad of Medical or Public Health Schools around the
world? Why then is there not a Healthcare Environmental Services School?
If you refer to my I
golf; therefore I am a golfer blog from February 2012 you’ll see that I
spoke to this exact topic and laid out the foundation for what I think are the
crucial areas that all staff using cleaning and disinfectant products need to
be taught. This still holds true for me
now. In fact I have seen the results
myself when this type of training is incorporated. When you have a staff that have been trained
to clean with a detailed process and then have them communicate it back to you
and demonstrate how to do it, you can save lives. Knowledge is power. Let’s impart our knowledge so our cleaning
staff have the power to do their jobs effectively.
Bugging Off!
Nicole
