Hi
Can anybody help?
(Bear with me, this sounds complicated!) We have always offered a
treatment service to our employees and issued OTC medication if required.
When we lost the night nurse cover we then had a dispensing machine for
Paracetamol, indigestion tablets and throat lozenges. This dates back to
1990 and a cigarette machine was modified to dispense all the medication,
whereas dedicated machines supplied only one type of pill. This was free to
employees and accessed by a token system. The sick employee approached the
security officers (who held the tokens), was issued with a token and then
signed a register to say what medication had been taken. The employee
self-prescribed - security just issued a token. In actual fact this
facility is rarely used - 9 or 10 times in a rolling 12 month period by
approximately 120 employees.
We have a new security manager who will no longer allow his men to hold the
tokens "because it is illegal". I assume he means that First Aiders cannot
dispense medication, although he is aware that they are not doing the actual
prescribing, just holding the tokens. He is unable to produce any evidence
to substantiate this although I am sure he may well be correct. This is
something I inherited when I took over the department and I must confess to
not giving it a second thought since it just seemed to run itself. I have
thought of providing a Paracetamol dispenser but the unions will kick up if
their shift people have to pay for their own medication - we're talking 40
pence here you know!! I am also not overly keen that people will be able to
obtain fairly unlimited supplies. (Some weeks ago an employee took an
overdose of his own Paracetamol and it was quite a nightmare trying to find
him on a large site!)
So after all that, I guess I need the answer to two questions :a) the legal
question
b) how the rest of you deal with pill dispensers
Sorry to be so long-winded.
Regards
Chris
Christine Harrop
Occupational Health Manager
Telephone 01295 223311 Page no 157
e-mail [log in to unmask]
Occupational Health Department
Kraft Foods (UK) Ltd
Ruscote Avenue
Banbury
Oxon
OX16 2QU
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