Health Surveillance during COVID19

As companies pass or approach their deadlines for annual health surveillance, I wanted to ensure you are aware of the requirements to keep your staff safe.   The Department of Health and HSE have set out guidelines to offer a flexible approach to health surveillance and the bullet points of this are.

1. As a minimum, an annual health declaration should be completed and reviewed by your Occupational Health Provider.  If any issues are identified, then measures should be put in place for a review of everyone concerned. 
2. Health surveillance can be deferred for a period of 3 months providing a paper assessment as above has been carried out.  Areas of concern will be addressed either by telephone, video or face to face using full PPE measures. 
3. If required and safe to do so health surveillance should be carried out using full PPE measurements and agreed with client, employee, and provider.

Health surveillance is an integral part of keeping your staff healthy and one bonus of providing this during COVID19 is the opportunity to offer mental health support to staff within these sessions.  Now more than ever mental health is being impacted as we continue to face challenging times. 

I would urge all clients to ensure that the necessary measures to ensure your employees welfare is considered and met where feasible.   Although the HSE are being flexible with their guidance, I cannot stress enough that if staff are not protected and afforded appropriate management of their health then as a company you could be left open to employee claims for respiratory damage, noise induced hearing loss and much more. 

For more information on any of the above measures, please contact me directly on roseanne@ayrshiremedical.co.uk