Hi

Could anybody give me an opinion on standard DSE assessments and at what point it moves into occupational health? I am asking for when employees have health issues such as Fibromyalgia and tennis elbow etc. We have no trained in Occupational Health Therapist and nobody with any medical experience so it is possible that advising on chair types and how to sit, move around etc maybe over stepping the boundary from DSE from a standard Health and Safety point of view?

Many Thanks for reading 

I have completed Advanced DSE Assessor training and in my former role I was responsible for the H&S of 300 office staff but can't fault the HSE assessment form.

It is a great self assessment tool for most employees and it also helps to highlight where employees need help. The main area I have found it helps is when employees are getting headaches which for the most part is due to lighting and shoulder problems where they lean on their forearms. It is amazing how quickly some of these problems disappear IF they follow the guidelines in the form (Not everyone does).

On the occasions I have been involved with though where employees did have health problems I referred the person to HR who then arranged for OH to look at because it was outside the range of my own competencies.

In one of these cases the employee was given a chair with pump up support in the lumbar area and another one was given a desk with longer legs. Neither case was really successful in solving the employees complaints.