A look into the lives of CSU's Current Environmental Health Interns
Violation charades, Windsor, and joint inspections!
Alright, so the first week is over and I’m so tired! Getting up early in the morning has been a lot harder than usual, especially since my drive to work is long. It’s kind of interesting though, driving through all the farms, feedlots, grainaries, ect. Anyway, I’ve been doing more inspections. I’ve finished my observation requirements and now I’m on to doing joint inspections. In a joint inspection I conduct the inspection and I’m evaluated at the end by my supervisor. My first one was SO stressful. It wasn’t hard, but I was really nervous and afraid that I would miss everything. It ended up okay. I didn’t miss too many things. My next joint inspection was really difficult because the place we went to had a lot more problems than expected. Pretty much everything that was done was done wrong. We will be doing a follow up soon, so hopefully things are better! I just don’t think that the employees had much food safety training. After that I did a joint inspection of a coffee shop and it went great! I felt confident and the employee was really up to speed in all aspects of food safety. It was such a relief to finally see someone who actually tested the sanitation concentration on a regular basis and kept a temperature log. Oh, if only everyone could do that….
We drove through Windsor a couple of times and that was the first time I had seen tornado damage. It was really shocking. Some of the houses were completely destroyed and were just piles of rubble, and some houses in the tornado’s path still had all their shingles and everything. It was so weird. When we got back to the office after visiting Windsor, I learned that Weld County had been under a tornado watch all afternoon and we had no idea. We just kept driving and doing inspections. Here’s a little known fact: Weld County had the most tornados of any county in the U.S. Oh, and by the way, the food safety program was really busy after the tornado. They had to go out and check temperatures in all the restaurants/grocery stores that had been out of power and had to through out any food that had been above temperature for too long. I missed that excitement though.
Some of the afternoons in the office are pretty quiet, so the interns have to find something to do. Friday afternoon was especially quiet, so we created a game called Violation Charades (we were really tired and needed a laugh). The point to Violation Charades is to act out any of the violations that can be found in an inspection. The other players must identify the violation and provide a comment on why it is wrong from a Public Health standpoint and what should be done to fix it. We particularly had fun acting out evidence of pests and poor hygienic practices. We had to be pretty creative with a few. Who knew that you could act out the lack of backflow protection in a mop sink?
We drove through Windsor a couple of times and that was the first time I had seen tornado damage. It was really shocking. Some of the houses were completely destroyed and were just piles of rubble, and some houses in the tornado’s path still had all their shingles and everything. It was so weird. When we got back to the office after visiting Windsor, I learned that Weld County had been under a tornado watch all afternoon and we had no idea. We just kept driving and doing inspections. Here’s a little known fact: Weld County had the most tornados of any county in the U.S. Oh, and by the way, the food safety program was really busy after the tornado. They had to go out and check temperatures in all the restaurants/grocery stores that had been out of power and had to through out any food that had been above temperature for too long. I missed that excitement though.
Some of the afternoons in the office are pretty quiet, so the interns have to find something to do. Friday afternoon was especially quiet, so we created a game called Violation Charades (we were really tired and needed a laugh). The point to Violation Charades is to act out any of the violations that can be found in an inspection. The other players must identify the violation and provide a comment on why it is wrong from a Public Health standpoint and what should be done to fix it. We particularly had fun acting out evidence of pests and poor hygienic practices. We had to be pretty creative with a few. Who knew that you could act out the lack of backflow protection in a mop sink?
Comment
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Comment by Samantha Kantrowitz on June 9, 2008 at 5:56pm - I am loving violation charades for the RamWelcome street fair... want to join the committee for it? So far it's just T-Rae, Melodie, and I.
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Comment by T-Rent on June 9, 2008 at 11:29am - Sounds like a lot of work!
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Comment by Erin Reichert on June 9, 2008 at 9:57am - Violation charades huh? It sounds like a fun EHSA activity for next year. Or maybe for the Ram Welcome street fair? :-)
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