Temperature checks for Employees

[travelingrn2001]

Does your hospital check temperatures for employees to work?

Are they consistent or only sporadic?

Some days, only at high volume times one or two people are assigned to check employees' temperature, besides these rare times, people pass through unchecked at my facility.

[BSN-to-MSN, ADN, BSN, RN]

Every single person entering gets screened with questionnaire and temperature check. I do not know if the infrared temperature checking machine is very accurate, though. I stopped by the screener to look how it works one day, and it showed 94.6, 95.7, barely even 97.4 as people were walking by.

Now, they are rolling out some kind of app to complete the questionnaire on the phone at home before work, and pass by the check point faster. It is tied to the work profile.

[lisa333]

How can these infrared thermometers possibly be accurate? I take my temperature orally every day before I go to work with a cheap thermometer and it always reads a believable number between 97.5 and 99.0.

When I get to work, they check my temperature at the entrance and it's barely ever above 95 degrees. It seems like they're using the thermometer correctly based on the manual but everyone has a laughably low temperature. How can this be used as a diagnostic tool? I almost want to try pointing it at one of our super febrile neuro patients' foreheads and see if it's even possible for the thing to go up to 98.6.