Health & Safety Plans

General

1. Amir has been assigned as the safety officer of the clinic and accordingly should be your point of contact for any questions/concerns you might have. Amir can be reached via email at amir@compassclinic.ca or by phone at 778-681-0559.

2. From now on, the clinic will be open at 9 am, and the earliest an appointment can be booked will be at 9:30 am.

3. Staff must do a health self-assessment before coming to work and will only attend if they are symptom-free. (https://bc.thrive.health/covid19/en)

4. If you are experiencing the common symptoms of the virus, such as a fever, shortness of breath or a cough, or potentially have been exposed to someone who shows signs of COVID-19, then it is crucial that you stay home, consult your medical practitioner and do not come to the clinic until you have been fully cleared by the appropriate health authorities. Please call, as soon as you are safely able to, Amir or Amanda/Carmi at the Clinic and inform us of your specific situation.

5. To ensure no possible COVID-19 risk, at the beginning of every shift, our staff will perform a temperature check (must be under 37.8 𝇈C) and our clinic has been equipped with wipes, sanitization stations, masks and gloves for people to use. As you walk into the clinic, please go straight to the kitchen and wash your hands at the sink where soap and paper towel dispensers have been installed. Please try to avoid touching many surfaces around the clinic if it is not required. We have also removed all non-essential accessories in the clinic including the reception, waiting area and offices to minimize virus spread through touching surfaces.

6. As part of the measures taken, no water, tea or coffee will be provided at the clinic. Please bring your own water bottles with you.

7. If you are still able to work from home, then please continue to do so. Presence in the office should be limited to when it is absolutely necessary or needed.

8. If you consider yourself to be potentially more at risk (i.e. have any underlying medical conditions) of contracting the virus and experiencing worsening symptoms of it, then please carefully consider your options and decide whether you would feel comfortable coming to the clinic to work. Please inform Amir of any specific situation/concern you might have.

9. There will be a dedicated person for continuous office sanitization and will be scheduled to be in the clinic based on the scheduled clinic appointments.

10. Steps will be taken to minimize employees’ contact with each other, such as moving chairs and work areas farther apart. We will be using the large offices for assessments only to ensure the 6ft social distancing is maintained. Smaller offices could be used either for staff or an extension of the waiting area if needed.

11. Appointments will be scheduled at intervals to minimize having too many people in the waiting room.

12. There will no longer be any back-to-back sessions. Instead, a 30 min slot between each appointment will be put in place and devoted to sanitizing and cleaning all the surfaces in the room before the next session.

13. As we reopen the clinic, we plan to gradually increase the number of assessments we schedule in a day. We will be, however, monitoring the situation and load of assessments on a weekly basis to determine future appointments.

14. Kitchen utensils, cutlery and any shareable items in the kitchen will be temporarily suspended from further use. Please bring your own utensils and cups/mugs but don’t keep in the kitchen for others to share. The fridge and kitchen sink can still be used, but please wash your hand before leaving the kitchen.

15. When using any shared items found in the printing room, for example, (i.e. stationery office items, staplers, printer keypad, etc.) please wipe them thoroughly before and after use or use the disposable gloves that are available for everyone to wear in the clinic. Alternatively, aim to take notes on your computers or bring your own pens from home, but don’t leave them behind.

16. Staff should refrain from sharing computer keyboards or phones. If shared, sanitize after each use.

17. Hand sanitizing stations and wipes will be distributed around the clinic.

18. Please continue to regularly wash and sanitize your hands, especially after being in contact with others or with different surfaces. All staff, must wash their hands at least at the following times:

– As they walk into the clinic

– Before starting a new session with a client

– After body fluid exposure or risk

– After touching a client

– After touching client surroundings

– Every 2 hours if possible

19. Plexiglass shields on our front desk have been installed as a physical protection barrier between the front desk and the client/child. If you are not part of the admin team, please do not go into the printing room behind the reception. Admin team will also maintain social distancing within the printing room/reception area if more than one person is present.

20. Notices will be posted encouraging people to wash their hands and to avoid touching their faces.

21. Seating in all rooms have been arranged to allow for appropriate physical distancing. plexiglass has been installed in some of the large offices. If neither physical distancing nor plexiglass barriers can be used, staff will use appropriate PPE (visors, gloves, masks as applicable). We also have complimentary masks for clients to wear if they don’t wear one when they arrive. We will give the parents the option of waiting in the waiting room if they are ok to wear a mask; otherwise, they can wait in their cars.

22. Staff will respect safe distancing and parents are expected to encourage their children to do so.

23. When in tight spaces and locations (i.e. corridors, elevator, washrooms), please continue to practice social distancing by allowing the other person to freely move/pass by first.

24. Tissues and trash bins are easily accessible and disposed of daily, or more frequently if required.

25. The inside door of the printing room will always stay closed and locked. Access to the printing room will be limited to the admin team unless it is really necessary for others to go in. Practice social distancing and wear a mask if needed to access it.

26. When conversing with another staff member or the admin in the printing room or reception, please do so from a safe distance. While wearing masks in the clinic is optional for the Clinic team members, we encourage everybody to wear masks when walking within the clinic or talking to others.

27. A log of every employee’s time spent in the clinic will be recorded, which is crucial in case someone contracts the virus. Please remember to register your in/out time on   (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1otIfoWWUZXG3Vs6FzJjxhIr2saI3aa7DodOjKo6wD14/edit?usp=sharing) every visit the clinic. If you are planning to arrive after hours, add it to the log and inform the admin of the reason for the visit, especially if you will be using any of the office space to ensure dis-infection afterwards.

28. We recommend that counselors continue doing their sessions through video conferencing whenever applicable.

 

 

Before an Appointment

1. Clients will be required to complete an online Owl survey asking them preliminary questions regarding their current health before arriving at the clinic. Also, clients will be asked to sign a waiver covering various aspects of their visit to the clinic including acknowledging our obligation to share clients contacts with authorities for tracing in case of an infection in the clinic.

2. Clients will be called on the day of the appointment to confirm, review infection precautions and steps that will be taken upon their arrival to the clinic.

3. Clients will call us when they arrive and are then asked to wait in their car and until they are called by the receptionist. The admin person at the clinic will then keep the clinic door open so that the client doesn’t need to touch the door.

4. Client’s temperature will be checked once they arrive at the reception using an infrared thermometer. Any person with a temperature of 37.8 C or higher will be advised to immediately leave the building, head back home, and consult with a medical practitioner. Their appointment will be rescheduled to a later date.

5. The client will be welcomed by the assigned practitioner and will walk together to the kitchen to wash their hands.

6. The waiting area and assessment space should be already prepared to maximize physical distance and hygiene while maintaining the assessment integrity.

7. Offices will be equipped with door tags; Green for sanitized offices and Red for offices that are yet to be sanitized.

8. Please allow the receptionist to assign you to the appropriate office where you will be doing your assessment. This is based on varying schedules of practitioners, their appointment types and availability of sanitized rooms.

9. Set up and test any technology that will be used during assessment (e.g. iPads, laptops). The assessment room would be sanitized between clients’ visits including the iPads. Feel free to give the iPads one more wipe before using it anyway.

10. If you are going to be using the test papers for the assessment, please wash your hands first before picking up the papers at the end of the corridor.

11. Psychologists are recommended to screen the children based on their ability to do an assessment in such an environment. Please coordinate the same with the admin team. Psychologists are also encouraged to discuss with the parents about the risks and benefits of doing the assessment now vs waiting. As suggested by the College, a clinical consent form will be shared with the clients in this regard after such a conversation.

12. Parent interviews will be completed via videoconferencing prior to assessment appointment.

13. All assessment and consent forms will be sent via Owl or email and completed at home.

During the Appointment

1. Practitioners will have the option to use the Physical barrier between them and the client. They also have the option of using visors or masks as they see appropriate.

2. Clients should be seated 6 feet from the clinician. In cases where closer interaction is necessary with the child or adult, then the clinician is required to wear a mask or visor.

3. Communicate with the client about infection precautions transparently; reassure the client about measures taken.

4. Encourage and model appropriate hand hygiene and etiquette (e.g. sanitizing before testing, sneezing into elbow

5. Try to eliminate the need for clinicians and clients to touch the same testing materials within a session by:

– Using iPad-based administration of testing rather than paper books

– Place contaminated items, such as toys, blocks and pencils after use into the assigned box in your room for it to be disinfected and cleaned after the session ends. Do not remove any items, especially ones related to the testing kits, from the room. Keep them in the room in the basket for sanitization.

– Refrain from sharing pens with examinees or use wipes to clean and disinfect between users.

– Place paper response booklets in ‘quarantine’ for at least 24 hours before scoring. These booklets should be placed in the provided Ziplock and taken to reception where the receptionist will request the practitioner to drop them in a carton box. The carton box will be kept in the printing room during the day and stored in the filing room overnight and will only be accessed at least 24 hours later. Two boxes will be available for this and marked with the date that it is expected to be used.

6. Limit people present to no more than two (practitioner & client) in the assessment room. An exception may be made for an extra person from the same household (e.g. a parent) where the clinical situation demands it (e.g. testing a young child where the iPad cannot be used and the parent is needed to handle the materials safely).

7. When possible, complete the assessment in a single assessment space, rather than multiple spaces

8. Psychologists are recommended to have their session with the child scheduled on a different date than that of the psychometrist to avoid situations where the child will get restless.

 

After the Appointment

1. Wash your hands and advise the client to do the same.

2. We advise clients to use contactless methods of payment, mainly e-transfers. If the machine will be used, clients will be asked to hold their card against the plexiglass so that the receptionist can enter the numbers on the machine, rather than reading it out loud and to avoid the need for the client to touch the machine. In the odd chance that the client inserts their card and PIN number on the machine themselves, then the card machine must be sanitized after each use.

3. Clients and staff are reminded to wash their hands or use hand sanitizer on leaving the office.

4. The office will then be sanitized, by an outsourced cleaning staff, before can be used by the next client. In addition, the offices will be equipped with sanitizing sprays and wipes in case there is a need to use the room again and the cleaning staff unavailable or busy sanitizing another room.

5. iPads, after being sanitized, will be taken to the printing room by the admin person and get them charged.