Remind me, which of my questions were inappropriate?

Malcarleton, Each woman and pregnancy is different and may have complicating factors such as the lady may be rhesus negative which if she received a blow or contact of any force may require examination to ensure that there has been no interference or cross contamination between the mother and foetus. Other factors such as gestational diabetes, increasing size, fatigue etc are individual to the person and cannot reasonably be mitigated by generic risk assessment processes. There are too many situations to list here, hence the need for appropriate assessment. Kevin

IMO I think it is fine to have a template which you can then use to base your risk assessment on. I think (as others have pointed out) that every pregnancy is going to be different and that means a generic assessment is not going to work. Using the template may prompt you to ask some questions to establish what may be difficult for the individual to do. It's also worth remembering basic social interaction and communication skills. A female member of staff may be better placed to ask the questions or get the information as some of these issues may be sensitive.

Kev, I think you are overcomplicating it. To take the point of a forceful blow (ouch!), surely you would a) want to protect all your employees from this risk and b) treat every pregnant worker as though they would be at enhanced risk from such an event. Because they are, The degree of enhancement may vary, but it will always be enhanced. And as for any medical complications/ considerations, those surely are not for us? Isn't that where OH gets involved? They do a risk assessment, sure, but it's not a humble H&S assessment. Your workplace RA (and forget the word generic; generic is always a bad approach to RA) should attempt to mitigate all significant risks to all your workers. It needs review in the event of a woman declaring that she is pregnant, and it may need tweaking, but it should already be most of the way there. As a practical example, at my last place we cared for people with degenerative neurological conditions, including Huntington's disease. People with Huntington's can exhibit uncontrolled spontaneous movements, which though not at all intentional, can have the force of a blow. So if one of our workers was pregnant we took care that she didn't work with people in that phase of their condition. Simple, no special assessment required, John

jwk, Yes but until you do the assessment you are making the assumption that the pregnant employee will know what is hazardous to their health and will have full understanding of conditions that may affect the pregnancy and will inform you accordingly. This is not always the case. As I have already said each pregnancy is very different and to treat all pregnant women as being exposed to the same hazards as women that are not pregnant would not be demonstrating a due level of care IMHO. I take your example with a pregnant worker not working with people with Huntingtons. I would have difficulty not having this control documented on a risk assessment. Pregnancy can bring with it a range of specific and original risks that may not have been considered at risk assessment stage when no pregnancies were evident.