2.8: Standard Operational Policies and Procedures

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Page ID: 51526

Tiffani Reardon, Tammy Powell, Jonathan Arnett, Monique Logan, & Cassie Race
Kennesaw State University

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Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this chapter, readers will be able to do the following:

Explain the purpose of standard operating policies and procedures.
Identify basic structure of standard operating policies and procedures.
Review examples and apply concepts from them to their writing.

This chapter introduces you to policies and procedure documents and to standard operating procedure documents. Click on the links, below, to see samples.

Hand-washing policies for health care personnel (policies_example.pdf)
Accounting policies and procedures (pols_procs_ex2.pdf)
Standard operating procedures: pouring dental impressions (sop1.pdf)

Overview

Standard operating procedures and policy-and-procedure documents are roughly the same: they establish standards for doing things and present specific step-by-step procedures for doing those things. Although these distinctions blur in practice, a policy-and-procedure document focuses more often on behavior expected of employees (for example, policies and procedures on smoking, substance abuse, or sexual harrassment). Standard operating procedures focus more standard expectations for performing specific procedures such as hand-washing by health care professionals or taking a dental implant in a dental lab.

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