Speak up well… It’s not sanitary…
Speak up well… And be heard
It may be that you’re both comfortable and pretty competent at speaking in public. If so, that’s great – especially when it comes to conducting those in-service training sessions in front of group of employees in that heath care facility. But if that’s not entirely the case for you, here are a few ideas to consider that might ease your burden.
First, in public speaking preparation really is everything. That means making notes about what you’re going to say and then rehearsing that presentation out loud. By the way those notes are critical to avoiding loss of the audience’s attention caused by unnecessarily repeating yourself.
Of course there is the necessary repetition we need to use to cement the really important stuff. That last one is based on the old saw that a good speaker tells them what he’s going to say, tells them and then tells them what he just said!
Oh, and look at the folks you’re talking to. That means looking them in the eyes – so every one of them feels that you’re talking only to them. Doing that goes a long way to being really effective.
Finally don’t be a distraction to your own message. Aimlessly wandering, nervously scratching your head, repeating the same lame phrase (like “you know”) or repeatedly separating your sentences with an “um” or an “ah” is almost guaranteed to lose interest and probably irritate your audience.
It’s not sanitary… unless it’s clean
This isn’t a case against sanitizers, but sometimes they’re overly relied upon. As we know, bacteria need three things to survive and multiply. They need a nutrition source, water and an acceptable temperature. Eliminate one and generally they perish. It’s why we refrigerate fresh foods and try to remove food residues from prep surfaces and generally keep them dry.
If one or more of those conditions favorable to bacterial reproduction is present – and we even diligently use a disinfectant, the effect of that product will be limited. Take the case of unremoved food soils that are left on a prep table.
The disinfectant will kill pathogen on the outer surface of the soil, but not any hiding beneath it and it’s now game on.
That’s why we always need to emphasize thorough cleaning as the first measure to ensure good sanitation. As we learned during Covid thoroughly washing our hands with regular soap and water effectively removes virtually all microbes from our skin. Similarity thoroughly cleaning that table, quarry tile, or equipment goes a long way toward eliminating food borne infections well before any sanitizer is employed.
Next up: Food borne damage to our customers.
Next up: Practice makes perfect better.