Course helps busy healthcare professionals sharpen skills related to workforce safety, emergency management, infection prevention, and other hazardous situations

PLYMOUTH MEETING, PA—Healthcare safety, security, risk, and facility managers need the knowledge and skills to prepare them for hazards that threaten today's complex and chaotic healthcare environment, like those posed by Ebola and other natural and man-made agents. Recognizing the need to provide on-demand learning for busy healthcare environmental workers across the entire spectrum of healthcare, ECRI Institute has developed an online version of its nationally respected Center for Healthcare Environmental Management (CHEM) training course.

The certification course teaches compliance with standards from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, as well as the Joint Commission and others. Healthcare risk managers and occupational health safety professionals who take the course will gain the tools and resources needed to better protect workers and patients from the hazards present in the everyday healthcare setting.
"This new online course gives participants all of the resources offered in the classroom and gives them the convenience to do it on their own time," says Luke Petosa, MSc, HEM, HEM-CC, director of the Center for Education and Training, ECRI Institute.

This 21-part course, which can be taken over 12 months, addresses essential areas of workplace safety, including emergency management, accident investigations, hazard recognition, industrial hygiene, environmental infection control, and security, along with their associated compliance standards. While completion of the entire course and successfully passing the examination is required to earn certification, individual courses are also available on an ad hoc basis if certification is not the goal.

Upon passing the examination, which can be completed at any time within one year of course registration, students are certified as Healthcare Environmental Managers and may use the professional designation "HEM." This earned certification is recognized nationwide by hospitals, health systems, insurance providers, consultants, professional organizations, the U.S. Public Health Service, the Indian Health Service, and others.

Participants will join more than 1,600 HEM certified individuals who have taken the course over the past 15 years. "The CHEM course provided information that is very relevant to current practices and current events. The instructors are excellent and willing to offer advice," says Johnny Tolbert, HEM, Children's National Medical Center, Washington, DC.

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