Hollywood images and newspaper headlines have conditioned us to think that disasters are composites of giant explosions, stampeding crowds and commandos barking into walkie-talkies.
Disasters also can be invisible, gradual, mundane and microscopic – like the influenza germ that traveled around the globe in 1918, snuffing out millions of lives.
Understanding and managing the small, daily practices that fend off disaster is the work of Medical Survival Consultants of North Dartmouth. The company offers courses in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation, first aid, continuing education for health care workers, and workplace compliance with OSHA health and safety rules. And it soon will begin offering courses for food-service workers.
“A disaster for a company could be to have a building burn down,” said Daniel Shea, president and CEO of Medical Survival Consultants. “And disasters can work with a domino effect. Even a small thing – a small spark – can start a disaster going. We work on preparing people to prevent disaster.”
Shea founded Medical Survival Consultants in May 2007, immediately after his graduation from Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn., where he earned a bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurial small business. Shea said that he had worked as a CPR instructor in high school. Later, as a student at Quinnipiac, he quickly realized that students in the health care majors were struggling with a shortage in classes for CPR and first aid. Shea began offering CPR classes on a more frequent and flexible schedule than other sources did.
“Students needed this training; they were banging on my door,” he said. Generally, in the health care industry, Shea said, “people know their specialties, but they might not know the fundamentals that we do from day to day and take for granted.
Shea said his year-old company now has about 370 clients, from commercial laundry operations to dental hygienists, and all manner of businesses in between. His management staff is very small, but he keeps 15 teachers on contract to conduct health and safety courses as needed. Among his instructors is a person who is retired from 30 years of service with OSHA.
Compared to large, catastrophic events, like earthquakes and giant floods, the disasters of daily life seem mundane. But they are pervasive, continuous, and they can wreck lives and businesses. Shea’s clients could include a dental hygienist who uses the right procedures to prevent aerosolized saliva from passing germs to others; a construction worker positioning scaffolding correctly to prevent deadly falls; a factory worker who properly labels and stores inflammable chemicals to prevent mixing and explosions.
The company is now preparing to get into the huge arena of training food service workers to be certified as ServSafe food protection managers. This training covers a wide range of practices to protect consumers – like cooking meat at the proper temperature, and properly storing and discarding foods to prevent spoilage. These rules also protect workers from injury in kitchens – which are among the most dangerous of workplaces because of the presence of flame, grease, sharp blades, noise and a fast pace of work. Shea said he hopes to have instructors ready to offer classes by mid-summer.
Diane Hunter, the practice project coordinator for South Coast Physician Services in Massachusetts, is charged with making sure that all medical practitioners of the South Coast Hospitals Group keep their skills polished and their knowledge current. To this end, Hunter contracts with Medical Survival Consultants to do CPR training required for periodic recertification by health care workers.
“Professionals want to make sure they have the most recent information and skills so that they can perform properly in an emergency,” Hunter said. •
