Improve Patient and Healthcare Worker Safety with Pre-Employment Testing

83403926Healthcare workers are responsible for assisting and providing the best outcomes for their patients in the safest ways possible. In order to accomplish this goal, workers need the ability to assess and diagnose patients properly, and administer treatments accordingly. When staffing companies use pre-employment testing to hire qualified employees, it improves the safety of everyone involved.

Pre-employment testing reduces the problem of hiring unskilled workers to fill healthcare positions. These screenings allow managers to assess a worker’s knowledge, skills and abilities so they can place them in the best positions. Pre-employment testing can also help weed out workers who simply aren’t cut out for jobs in a particular clinical specialty area.

How Can Screening Improve Patient and Worker Safety?
When patients come to facilities for treatment, they expect the workers to be competent enough to do their jobs effectively. When the employees don’t have the knowledge to administer medical treatments or recognize the symptoms of illnesses and emergencies, they put their patients’ safety in jeopardy.

PREMIUM CONTENT: 2014 Healthcare Staffing Assessment

In addition, when employees don’t understand core competencies, they can’t properly protect their patients from such dangers as communicable illnesses, poor medical treatment or abuse. If a worker can’t grasp the basics, he may not follow the proper procedures for administering medications and discharging patients. A valid and reliable pre-employment test can remedy these issues by giving employers a better selection of job candidates to choose from.

It’s not just patient safety employees must worry about. They need to take their own safety into consideration too. Blood-borne and airborne illnesses are common in healthcare facilities. When a worker fails to follow proper safety protocol, it can put them and others at risk.

In addition, healthcare professionals stand on their feet and do a lot of bending, pulling and heavy lifting, so back injuries are common. Pre-employment testing and core competency education can assess how well candidates understand job-related risks and how adept they are at protecting themselves and their coworkers from these issues.

The healthcare staffing industry is growing and the last thing a staffing company needs is a reputation for providing unqualified workers. A pre-employment test is the ideal way to improve the chances of employing workers who meet quality standards.

MORE: Hospital care quality information from the consumer perspective

Joseph Caracci

Joseph Caracci
Joseph Caracci is president of NurseCompetency. He can be reached at jcaracci (at) nursecompetency (dot) com.

Joseph Caracci

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