Andrew,
In my experience (which admittedly is not NHS), where there is a health
related issue that is preventing an individual from carrying out their
duties, the person would normally be referred to the OH unit for a
health/medical opinion. As part of this the OH professional may conduct an
assessment of the persons worktasks/workplace and make recommendations to
management regarding the fitness of the person to undertake their duties.
And, they would also make recommendations on any work/work task modifications
that may be indicated in order for the person to carry out their duties
without risk to their health and safety. Consideration would be given to the
requirements under the Disability Discrimination Act if the person fell under
the definition of 'disabled'. It would be then up to management to decide
upon what was reasonably practicable and indeed, on what action was to be
taken.
However in this scenario it appears that recommendations may not have been
given? If this is the case, may be the person who posed this scenario was
not privy to all the facts? or may be there were no recommendations required?
Of course, there is also the possibility that the person who undertook the
assessment did not have a sufficient level of knowledge and competency in
order to make recommendations?
The interesting thing for me was that the person had been advised by an EX
physio occ health team member - I wonder whether this physio conducted a risk
assessment on the task in question and whether indeed they had sufficient
background knowledge on the task and the person's underlying health condition
in order to make this statement. Oh how often do we hear the 'well my friend
is a....and he said that....'. I'm sure we've all come up against this one
many times before!
There seems something amiss in this scenario and it would be interesting to
hear the other side of the story before we all starting making assumptions
without the full picture.
Maxine Oliver
SPOHN
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