HEALTHCARE TODAY: News and views from the Institute of Hospitality in Healthcare Ltd
IHHC mounts online webinars to keep healthcare foodservice workers informed
As all readers of Foodservice Rep would be aware, COVID-19 has hit the healthcare sector particularly hard.
While we at the IHHC recognise that the networking and support services we offer are even more important at times like this, the social distancing restrictions and border closures left us no choice but to curtail our usual calendar of face to face activities.
Instead, we quickly adapted to the situation and moved into the online space. Our first online event was a webinar about COVID-19 and support services, with advice from food safety auditor Gary Kennedy and representatives from Queensland Health. The aim of this was to allay a lot of people’s concerns by pointing out that the cleaning and sanitisation procedures we already conduct on a day to day basis are sufficient to protect against the spread of coronavirus. Obviously there have been additional requirements from Safe Work Australia which apply to workplaces, however the key message was that what people do every day in healthcare kitchens would be sufficient to kill any virus on crockery and cutlery that had come back from patients.
We have continued online webinars and info sessions in the months that followed, with these taking the place of the face to face events that our branches ordinarily provide to their members. While we had no choice but to go online due to the restrictions, it has worked in our favour because it’s actually made it easier for people to participate. Instead of having to take a whole morning off work to travel to a one hour event, they’ve been able to sit in front of their computer and be a part of a webinar without even leaving their workspace.
Our other webinars have included developing a business continuity plan for foodservices, which we conducted in April in anticipation of the possibility that kitchens would need to be closed down in the event of a staff member testing positive to COVID, necessitating alternative food sourcing and the fast upskilling of untrained and unfamiliar staff. While larger organisations would already have these kinds of contingency plans in place, we felt there were many smaller-scale facilities which could benefit from the advice offered.
Our June webinar looked at rapid service disinfection, which advised what cleaning processes would minimise the transmission of any kind of outbreak, such as COVID, flu or norovirus, and different ways of undertaking disinfection.
In July we asked a dietitian to present a webinar on food fortification in residential aged care. Food fortification is a way of adding more nutrients through additional ingredients, and is often a better option than food supplementation. Supplements might be needed at certain times, but there are lots of ways in which food can be made more nutrient or energy dense while still being satisfying and enjoyable to eat.
All these webinars have been recorded and you can access them for free online – you don’t need to be an IHHC member. Just visit https://www.ihhc.org.au/publications/online-resources/ and you can click on the topic of your choice to access.
We have more of these online events planned for the remainder of the year, so if you’d like to find out what’s coming up, just visit the Events page at our website www.ihhc.org.au where you can also register for events as they’re announced.
As mentioned last issue, the IHHC has also had to postpone our annual conference until next year. In place of this, an online session with two keynote speakers who had been scheduled to speak at the conference will be held on Thursday 29 October – giving people a taste of what they would have covered. All our online sessions are free, so check them out at www.ihhc.org.au/events/
TROY LITZOW
National Vice President - IHHC
