Fire Safety in Healthcare Facilities

About the Course

While health facilities themselves play a vital role in providing emergency clinical care to the community, occurrence of fire accidents in health facilities, not only threatens life of healthcare functionaries, patients and their attendants. Such accidents, especially in short to medium term, also impede the capacities of healthcare facilities to meet the clinical care needs of communities they are meant to serve.

This course provides a comprehensive understanding of fire safety measures tailored to requirements of healthcare facilities. It explores the unique vulnerabilities of healthcare facilities while providing all trainees with the essential knowledge about prevention of fire accidents, use of fire prevention, detection, and suppression systems, capacity building of all stakeholders etc. The course also provides information on practical aspects like planning and conduct of fire drills, training sessions, and introspection on current preparedness are integrated to build a proactive fire safety culture.

By the end of the course, all hospital/healthcare functionaries are expected to acquire the knowledge and skills to plan fire safety plans/procedures; implement robust fire safety protocols, conduct regular inspections, undertake regular training and re-training of all functionaries while developing capacities to respond to fire emergencies in an effective and timely manner, thus ensuring the safety of patients, staff, and property.

Description

The "Fire Safety in Healthcare Facilities" course equips healthcare professionals with critical knowledge and skills to address fire hazards effectively. Through engaging modules, participants are expected to gain insights into fire safety, prevention strategies, and the use of suppression tools like extinguishers and alarms.

• Course objectives:
  • Enhance awareness of fire hazards and risks in healthcare settings
  • Equip participants with fire safety and emergency response skills
  • Promote compliance and preparedness for fire safety standards
  • To enable all trainees to use the learnings from this course to undertake similar capacity building initiatives in their respective institutes/ hospitals/ health facilities
• Target audience: The course is ideal for all cadres of healthcare and other staff in administrative capacities. This includes hospital administrators, departmental heads, fire safety official, hospital engineers, etc.

• Overview: The entire course has been divided into six modules, as detailed below:

  Module I: Introduction to Fire Safety

  • Importance of Fire Safety in an healthcare facility
  • Case study
  • Causes of Hospital Fire
  • Strategies of Fire Prevention
  • Detection, Alarm and Suppression

  Module II: Fire extinguisher

  • Types of Fire Extinguisher
  • Proper use of extinguisher

  Module III: Action to be undertaken in the event of a fire accident

  • Evacuation: Operational definitions
  • Fire alarm: Actions to be taken
  • Evacuation plan
  • Patient evacuation prioritization plan
  • Levels of evacuation
  • Challenges to evacuation

  Module IV: Regulatory and Operational Issues for Preventing and Mitigating Risk of Fire Accidents

  • Construction and Design Considerations
  • Operational issues
  • Ensuring safety
  • Planning and Training programs

  Module V: Planning for and conduct of fire drills in health facilities

  • Aims and objectives of the drill
  • Steps for conducting the drill

  Module VI: Take home message and introspection

  • Introspection
  • Areas to be taken care
  • Conclusion

Important note:

The above-mentioned course has been designed with utmost care to provide requisite knowledge and skills to the trainees on matters relating to fire safety. However, since the primary responsibility for fire prevention and fire protection lies primarily with respective State Governments, all trainees are required to stay well-informed and remain up-to-date on the rules for fire prevention and fire protection, as laid in the form of State Regulations or Municipal By-Laws.