Our Occupational Health Advisor Bronwyn attended a two day seminar provided by The at Work Partnership and is sharing her learnings particularly surrounding the following subjects:
- OH work during the pandemic highlighted key Occupational Health lessons which include:
- The need to develop pandemic-response or business continuity plans
- Ensure remote/home working capability – including remote access to OH records
- Opportunity to enhance the role of OH
- Enhanced role for IT in OH, including for remote assessment
- Need for better communication at all level
2. Assessing risk and fitness to work in a pandemic.
- ALAMA risk assessment tool developed by the ALAMA team:
https://alama.org.uk/covid-19-medical-risk-assessment/
It was highlighted that this is a tool to be only used as a guide and clinicians should ultimately use their clinical judgement on deciding on risks for each individual/employee.
- It was advised not to rely on shielding letters that individuals/employees received a these were sent to some people who are in fact deemed as low risk and the letter was sent in error.
- It was highlighted that the majority of concerns that individuals had were related to anxiety when returning to work due to the pandemic, ALAMA suggested that it was much easier to ease anxiety by suggesting the following:
It proved much easier to work out the vulnerability by looking at the Covid age webpage together and working out the results together, so they played a part in working out their vulnerability.’
- ALAMA also suggested the following key points:
- 0H must be embedded in key stakeholder groups such as PHE.
- consensus guidelines will be wrong, accept that they will be wrong, and adjust them as evidence emerges.
- use large databases, don’t expect to see meta-analysis.
- expect there to be many other opinions, tools, and approaches.
- ensure that there is just one OH solution and ensure that the entire OH community are united behind it
4. The last topic of interest was relating to OH in the pandemic and preparing for a new wave who highlighted some key points:
- businesses having the appropriate resources available such as EAP, resilience training, parent support groups, mental health apps, mental health awareness sessions etc.
- review risk assessments and safe systems of work are in place.
- continue to review the situation as it emerges.
