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Posted By Peter Roddis
I would be interested in hearing from other professionals with a responsibility for managing Occupational Health units.
I am looking at developing a much more proactive service and would be interested in your experience if you have done the same.
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Posted By Paul Craythorne
Peter,
A few years ago I found myself being placed in control of the medical department at a large automotive component manufacturer. As a HS&E Manager it was quite a new but challenging experience for me. The service was manned by a contract service provider (who shall remain nameless). The staff were 2 full time Registered General Nurses and a visitng General Practitioner none of whom had any occupational health qualifications.
Consequently they spent most of their time in the surgery (yes it was still called a surgery!!)waiting for people to come down with their aches and pains and they popped them a few pills and potions and had some tea and sympathy.
I decided that this service was next to useless as it was just an extension to the NHS.
I put a tender specification together and put the service out to tender to several organisations. I vetted the tenders and visited places where the tenderers had exisitng contracts. I then awarded the contract and started the process (in conjunction with the service provider) of recruiting the nurse and physician.
After a while I managed to recruit an excellent nurse who the Diploma in Occupational Health and was a qualified first aid and manual handling instructor. She also had some good knowledge of H&E so was a valuable colleague when it cam to carrying out risk assessments etc. The Physician I recruited was also excellent and had extensive experience of industry and had no time for wasters.
My advice to you is to decide exactly what you want from the service, sell it to your union (if you have one) and the workforce (there was strong resistance to change for me in the early days but it was overcome).
If you intend to outsource it then put a good spec together and ensure that you are in control of the process from start to finish. I have e-mailed you an example set of documents that I have since modified. They are only basic but should get you started.
Best of luck. If you need any more advice please e-mail me direct.
Regards,
Paul Craythorne
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Posted By Graham Bullough
Paul's answer was very clear, helpful and a good example of the benefit of the discussion forum.
To echo part of Paul's response, a good indicator of whether or not you have an effective occupational health (OH) service is whether or not the OH nurses and doctors ever venture into the workplace/s and advise/remind management, etc. about potential health risks, relevant medical surveillance and even basic visual screening for problems by employees themselves and/or their supervisors.
Some years ago I heard of a good example which illustrates this issue. It concerned a large engineering factory which had a small department of doctors, either full time or regularly visiting, but probably neither trained nor experienced in OH. Evidently the doctors spent all their time in their offices and never ventured into the factory. An employment medical adviser from HSE paid a visit and couldn't help notice that some employees showed clearly visible signs of a skin problem arising from uncontrolled exposure to an irritant (nickel rings a bell in my hazy memory). I know this example is anecdotal, but it's nevertheless a useful one.
When seeking prospective OH doctors and nurses, seek evidence that they are in fact qualified and experienced in OH. One indicator of this is if good prospective candidates are given, or better still, ask for a summary of your organisation's activities and processes, they should be able to summarise the OH risks for your organisation. For any OH risks you select as examples, they should also be able to summarise what measures should be in place to prevent or minimise them, along with further measures to show if the control measures are ineffective or have failed. Another indicator of an effective OH service after appointment could be the degree of contact and work with health and safety practitioners, given that OH and H&S are or should be complementary roles with some inevitable overlap.
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Posted By Keith Jackson
You seem to be just the man I need to speak to about noise assessments. Can you look at my discussion link and give some guidance please.
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