Good afternoon.  It’s week 6 of our journey to create a culture of safety and awareness to reduce elopement risks.  This will be the last weekly edition of our elopement prevention plan.  Moving forward, we will send monthly scenarios for you to follow.  These scenarios will come on the first Sunday of each month.

If you’ve been following along, your community is safer today than it was a month and a half ago.  If you continue, it will be safer tomorrow than it is today.  Nice work.

If you missed week 1, check it out here.

If you missed week 2, review it here.

If you missed week 3, here it is.

Check out week 4, here.

Week 5 can be found here.

Elevate your Community Safety

Week 6

Congratulations, you’ve successfully shifted your culture and carried out tactics within a robust plan to make your community a safer place for your residents.  

You can rest easier at night knowing you have

• Created and implemented a robust QAPI plan to address any potential risk.
• You implemented the funnel approach to make your physical plant secure.
• Identified safety processes that were out of compliance, corrected them, and continued monitoring them through audits.
• We implemented elopement drills and completed education based on knowledge and operational gaps.
  
  

The work is never complete, but the work you’ve completed will set you up for success.

Ongoing Elopement Drills

Moving forward, you must carry out monthly elopement drills on each shift to ensure the culture of safety and accountability continues.  With each drill, you will immediately complete a SWOT analysis with the participants and create on-the-spot education.

Elopement Drill Scenario

For this month’s scenario, you will discretely open an exterior door to your community or building.  This could be a stairwell exit door or a corridor or hallway door that leads directly outside.

By now, these doors are secured and should not be utilized by employees, residents, or visitors to enter or exit.  

Open the door, prop it open with a chair or other object, and wait within a direct line of sight of the door but as hidden from normal view as you can be.

Take note of the following.

• Are staff responding? 
• How long does it take them to respond?
• Is there a visual or audible alarm that notifies staff the door is open?  If not, should there be?
• What physical building changes are needed to reduce our risk further?
• Where are there other similar doors where this risk prevails?
• Once staff members are aware of the opened door, how do they respond?
• Is a resident count done to ensure all residents are accounted for?
  
  

Complete this scenario, SWOT analysis, and after-action education for all three shifts.

Whenever you’re ready, there are a couple of ways I can help you.

1. Leverage our partnership with CEUSrEZ and purchase NAB-approved, online, self-paced, continuing education courses at a 20% discount here.
2. Coming this week.  Stay tuned!
3. Coming soon in March 2024.  Stay tuned!