Build your infection prevention checklist and watch your sales take flight.
By Paul Girouard
I come from a family of pilots. My parents and brother were pilots. My Dad lived on an air ranch in Florida where he would spoil his grandkids with airplane rides around Central Florida. You would think that my overprotective wife would be worried to see her children take off in exotic aircraft for parts unknown, but she wasn’t. She knew that pilots are all trained to use checklists before, during, and after their flights.
The checklists helped to develop safe and consistent habits when flying. I pulled the following from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association (AOPA) website as an example of one of their many lists for pilots. If you are a pilot, you need to remember these (most importantly, the landing checklist); they’ll be on the exam!
Before-Takeoff Checklist:
- Auxiliary fuel pump…………………. Off
- Flight controls…………………………… Free and correct
- Instruments and radios…………… Checked and set
- Landing gear position lights…. Checked
- Altimeter……………………………………. Set
- Directional gyro……………………….. Set
- Fuel gauges……………………………….. Checked
- Trim…………………………………………….. Set
- Propeller…………………………………….. Exercise
- Magnetos…………………………………… Checked
- Engine idle…………………………………. Checked
- Flaps……………………………………………. As required
- Seat belts/shoulder harnesses. Fastened
- Parking brake……………………………. Off
Infection prevention checklist
We should all use the discipline that pilots must have to build our infection prevention business. What kind of checklists could we develop? I’d start with collecting the following:
- Recommended product formulary that follows regulatory guidelines. Include product assortment from major sub-categories, hand hygiene, gloves, PPE, surface, sterilization.
- Cross reference information on the major brands in the category.
- A good list of go-to supplier representatives. You never know when you will need to call in a favor.
- Regulatory guidance documents. This may sound intimidating; however, the CDC and FDA have developed user-friendly guidance over the years. Having these on-hand provides you with the opportunity to be a trusted resource to your customer base.
- Become a member or tap into the appropriate associations. You will accelerate your learning and value as you become embedded into APIC, AORN, AHRMM, and HIDA. These are good places to start, but you might want to check into the state chapters as well.
- Work with your go-to suppliers on providing samples where possible. Literature is good, but providing samples to show and tell really helps. Your manufacturers will start to see you as the go-to resource they want to prioritize and support.
- Develop reports on which customers are using or not using key products in the category. All these ideas are examples of saturation strategies that will help you sell more to existing customers.
- What metrics can you keep track of to make sure you are on course? It gets exciting to watch trends that provide confirmation on your planning.
It is hard to believe that we are at the end of 2023. As the year slows down and things get quiet, work on your checklist. Build the framework of a checklist that keeps you on track and that you can come back to for on-going support for a successful 2024.
Wash your hands.