IOSH Hosts Review Of Workers’ Health Project

Against a UK picture of 28 million working days lost, last year, to work-related ill-health and more than 2 million people suffering an illness they put down to work, health and safety professionals are poised to help build a healthier workplace in this country.

Leaders at the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) played host, end of September, to representatives from key nursing and occupational health organisations to discuss progress on a new pilot course designed to help health and safety practitioners play a more active role in helping to support people’s successful return to work following injury or illness. The programme, developed by IOSH and supported by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), looks to expand the role of the health and safety professional in creating a healthy, vibrant, resilient and skilled workforce for the 21st Century.

With the pilot supporting Dame Carol Black’s recent review of the health of the working age population, the national director for health and work took the opportunity to update the meeting on the review’s progress.

“While it’s important that health and safety practitioners don’t forget the original job they do so well, there is an opportunity for them to acquire new competencies that support the agenda of health and well-being in the workplace,” said Dame Carol.

“Health and safety practitioners are well placed to take a proactive, preventative role in spotting early signs of worker distress, signposting people to additional help and helping those who want to return to work to have the appropriate conversations… so there’s a real opportunity for health and safety practitioners to embrace a new, more supportive role that will help build a healthier workplace,” she added.

The workshop, which included representatives from The Ergonomics Society, Society for Occupational Health Nursing (SOHN), Society of Occupational Medicine (SOM), Association of Occupational Health Nursing Practitioners (AOHNP), as well as course provider COPE Occupational Health and Ergonomic Services, was also joined by Dr Bill Gunnyeon CBE, DWP Chief Medical Adviser.

“We face a real challenge in helping to ensure that wherever possible people who develop health conditions can remain in or quickly return to work, avoiding the risk of long term sickness absence and potential job loss with all its negative consequences for the health and wellbeing of those individuals and their families. Health and safety practitioners have the potential to contribute to this by enhancing the key role they already play in preventing work related illness and injury through the development of additional competencies.”

The Leicestershire workshop provided an opportunity for some of the leaders in occupational health to look at how the pilot course might be adapted and applied nationwide. The course aims to enable practitioners to help employers and workers become better at preventing ill-health in the first place, intervening as early as possible where needed and rehabilitating people back into work after they’ve been ill.

“This course has been created to fill the gap in support for working age people, as identified by Dame Carol’s recent review, and focuses on equipping health and safety professionals to take a more active role in multidisciplinary working, partnering those from other professions such as occupational health and HR,” said IOSH President Nattasha Freeman.

“Many barriers to work are organisational, not medical, and health and safety practitioners are ideally placed to help,” she concluded. Source: IOSH

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