Unit 3 Health and Safety in HSC Workplace Sample Assignment

Unit 3 Health and Safety in HSC Workplace Sample Assignment

Case Study 1

Systems, policies and procedures which the new director need to implement to ensure that information on health and safety is properly communicated in accordance with legislative requirements.

Case study 1

The new director is required to have a good health and safety environment is created at the workplace of NHS as there are many benefits of good health and safety and there are many shortcomings of the poor health and safety at work and they have been discussed below (HSE, 2013):

1.1 different method of communication

The different methods of communication that can be used by the health and care professionals are:

• Written:The staff should be provided with written material that has all the relevant trainings, explained in a clear manner. All the staff should have access to the written material for quick reference.
• Verbal: The staff should also be given daily and weekly verbal information and training so that any new development or change should be communicated to them at the earliest.
• Graphic:There should also be graphics used to communicate important messages which cannot be explained by written words clearly.
• Posters: Posters related to safety and security should be put up in the entire hospital so that not only the staff but the patients can also get the knowledge and use it for them.
• Leaflets: Leaflets should also be distributed to give the information in a quick and easy manner to the staff in the healthcare system.

1.2 The legal responsibilities of the employers:

The health and safety law responsibilities of the employers are as following which the director of the trust must comply with:
The director will need to assess the risks to the employees, customers, partnership working and any other person who could be affected by their activities. The director needs to arrange for the effective monitoring, planning, organisation, control, monitoring and review of the protective and preventive manners. The director is required to have a written health and safety policy if they have five or more employees. The director needs to ensure that they have complete access to health and safety advice. The director needs to consult employees about their risks at work and current preventive and protective measures (HSE, 2013).
Providing training to the employees:The director needs to ensure that training is being provided to the employees and training means helping the people to learn how to do something. The director would be required to provide training to the employees so that:
It can be ensured that people who work for the trust would know how to work safely and without risks to health. Effective training will contribute towards making the employees competent in health and safety. It will help the trust’s business by helping in avoiding distress caused due to occupational ill health and accidents. It will also prevent the financial costs of accidents and illness (HSE, 2012).
Responsibilities for managing health and safety in the North Staffordshire combined NHS trust.
The responsibilities for managing health and safety in the North Staffordshire combined NHS trust has been discussed below:
Roles and responsibilities:

• Directors: Provide positive leadership by setting a good example by following the health and safety policies. Ensure that the communication exists between all the sections of the service in regard to the health and safety. Ensure that the policies are in accordance with the legislative requirements (NORTH EAST LONDON, 2014)
• Staff: The employees need to adhere to this policy by taking care of their own and other people’s health and safety. To report any unsafe conditions, unsafe acts, defects, hazards and incidents. To use the equipment only when formally trained. To follow the health and safety requirements (NORTH EAST LONDON, 2014)
• The staff need to attend relevant trainings:on a regular basis so that they have full knowledge about the requirements of the health and safety of the patients and also so that they can take better care of the patients.
• COSSH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health):should be implemnetd in the hospital so that substances that are hazardoues to health are removed also a better susbsitute to a hazardous sustance should be removed. The staff should report about any hazardous object to the authorities as soon as possible (HSE, (n.d.)).
• RIDDOR: Reporting of injuries, diseases and dangerous Occurrenes regulations 2013:the employer alos has the duty to report any serious accidents, occupational disaeses and other specified dangerous occurrences to the authorites, so that further damage can be contrrolled (HSE, 2014).

3.1 The process for ensuring health and safety (NORTH EAST LONDON, 2014):

Plan:the trust’s director is required to ensure that there is a clear policy for health and safety and that policy is kept up to date. The performance standards are required to be set and the health and safety performance should be reported to Quality and safety Committee.
Do: the trust should have a process for assessing risks, identifying control measures and also to ensure that these control measures are implemented and they should be set out in the Risk management policy. The Trust’s director must involve the employees in the delivery of health and safety by inviting employee’s representatives to health and safety groups and by consulting with staff through the JNCC. There is also requirement of delivering health and safety training to the employees in accordance with the Education and development policy.
Check: the director of the trust will be required to monitor health and safety performance by regular reports to the health and safety groups and quality and safety committee.
Act: the Board Health and Safety Action plan would be reviewed quarterly at SHSG and the SHSG reports annually to the directors and in this way high level organisational response can be made to significant risks (NORTH EAST LONDON, 2014).
Implementing process: This policy would be placed on the NELFT website and the staff would be made aware about the policy through the monthly team brief. The quality and patient safety team would be responsible for ensuring newly approved documents are sent to the communications team so that it can be inserted in the team brief (NORTH EAST LONDON, 2014).
All the managers, the heads of service and team leaders should ensure that the policy is placed on the team meeting agendas and the team will be required to discuss its content and they will also need to analyse any training shortcomings (NORTH EAST LONDON, 2014).
Monitoring arrangements-health and safety governance:Every locality Health and Safety Group has a standing agenda so that it can discuss the incidents trends, compliance with health and safety performance indicators and other issues. The locality groups are chaired by the Integrated Care Directors. There are many meetings held like the Bi-monthly meetings of locality health and safety groups, annual updates to the quality and safety committee (NORTH EAST LONDON, 2014).

Health and safety priorities for the service area chosen.

We have chosen the accidents and emergency department to check the health and safety priorities of NHS and the findings are as below:
Legislative requirements: COSSH (Control of Substances Hazardous to Health):should be implemented in the hospital so that substances that are hazardoues to health are removed also a better susbsitute to a hazardous sustance should be removed. The staff should report about any hazardous object to the authorities as soon as possible (HSE, (n.d.)).
RIDDOR: Reporting of injuries, diseases and dangerous Occurrenes regulations 2013:the employer alos has the duty to report any serious accidents, occupational disaeses and other specified dangerous occurrences to the authorites, so that further damage can be contrrolled (HSE, 2014).
The independent report from the Health and safety Commission has found out that there were many defects in the health and safety requirements of the patients which had led to a high mortality rate and this has been discussed below which were way below the required standards and legal requirements:
There was a shortage of A & E staffs, the receptionist were untrained to be able to assess the patients. There was poor supervision of junior doctors. There was insufficient training of nurses. The equipment was of poor quality. There was a prolong delay in the treatment of the patients. The Emergency Assessment Unit was not well equipped. There were inadequate numbers of beds. There was a long delay in emergency operations. The numbers of surgeons was insufficient. There was poor care of the patents pot operation. The whole division is very chaotic. Most of the staffs were untrained (ALBERTI, Professor Sir George, 2009).
The recommendations by the Healthcare Commission are:
There is a need for the improvement in the Accidents and Emergency department and they are required to be sustained. They also need to increase the nursing and medical staff and also to improve training. NHS also needs to increase the emergency theatre sessions. They also need to improve the access to advice from the critical care team (ALBERTI, Professor Sir George, 2009)

Case Study 2

How information from risk assessments would assist care planning for individuals and organisational decision making about policies and procedures which would avoid incidents

Risk is the likelihood of anevent which would occur and would have harmful outcomes for a specific person (DIX, Maurice and Smith, Simon, 2010).
The risk assessment should be used in the care according to the needs of the services user that is the patients.
So if the service user is at a high risk then the risk assessment should be done on a regular basis and with complete concentration and even small risks should be assessed preciously as even a small risk may result in deadly consequences.
If the service user is at lower risk then the risk assessment can be done on a weekly basis but it should also be monitored in case the risk increases.  
Risk assessment: Risk assessment is the activity of collecting information by doing observation, investigation and communication. It is a process which is continuous and involves substantial amount of persistence and skill to assemble and manage relevant information in ways that would be useful for the users of the service (DIX, Maurice and Smith, Simon, 2010).

Case study 2

In the given case study it is shown that due to the lack of risk assessment the patient died and the South Birmingham Primary Care Trust was fined 20,000 pounds as the death was caused due to accident and negligence contributed to it. There is a need of risk assessment of the everyday equipment which is being used so that further accidents like this could be avoided as in the present case the sling was too big for the patient and if the correct assessment of the type and size of the sling according to the patient would have been done then it would have saved the life of the patient (HSE, 2008).
Also section 3(1) of the health and safety at work etc. Act 1974 declares that “it shall be the duty of each employer to conduct his undertaking in such a way that as far is practically reasonable that the people who are not his employees may be affected thereby are not exposed to risks to their health or safety” (HSE, 2008).
The risk assessment of the medical equipment on a timely manner will prevent incidents like the discussed case study. The responsible organisations should appoint a director who would be responsible for the medical device management and he should ensure that the following polices are address so that the risks can be minimised:
Decontamination, The life cycle of equipment, Records, Procurement, Adverse incident reporting, Action those are required on MHRA Medical Device Alerts and manufacturers’ corrective notices,Training,Technical specification,Regulatory compliances,Rationalisation to single models, Risk management,  Equipment in ventory, Manufacturer’ s instruction  and Disposal (MHRA, 2006)

Equipment that require risk assessment before first use are (MHRA, 2006):

Impact on health and safety policy on lifting and handling in health and social care practice and on the care users in the organisation
The South Birmingham Primary Care Trust case study has affected the health and safety policy and the issues and solutions related to the safety policy on lifting and handling in health has been discussed below:
Impacts of the case study:
Negative impact: the negative impact is that if the issue in the case study is not taken care of then it may result in similar death of the elderly people who are highly vulnerable to such risks.
Positive impact: is that this case study in understanding the big risks associated with the hoisting and if the staff is trained well then it would prevent any further similar accidents and deaths. The patients are the care users and the policy should cover the range of activities when the care user may require the assistance with moving like transfer from chair to bed, or to the bathroom or for bath. The plan should be easy to read and it should clearly mention the control measures for the moving and handling of the care users which should include the following:
The specific equipment those arerequired, the techniques to be used, the number of handlers required, the sling attached to the loops that are required to be used, the configuration of the leg size (HSE, 2012)
Theissues: Every year people get injured because of any hoisting equipment and if more care is kept during the use of the hoist equipment, then it will save the patients from getting injured or die like in the case of Birmingham Primary Care.
The patients are the care users and the policy should cover the range of activities when the care user may require the assistance with moving like transfer from chair to bed, or to the bathroom or for bath. The plan should be easy to read and it should clearly mention the control measures for the moving and handling of the care users which should include the following:
The specific equipment those are required, the techniques to be used, the number of handlers required, the sling attached to the loops that are required to be used, the configuration of the leg size (HSE, 2012)
Dilemmas care workers will encounter in carrying out health and safety policies and procedures.
Dilemmas: means those situations where the choices are difficult to make between two alternatives especially when they oppose each other, like in the healthcare the dilemmas are between the freedom of the customers and the duties of the care taker (OXFORD DICTONARIES, 2014).

The care workers will have many dilemmas in carrying out the health and safety policies and procedures and these dilemmas related to adult social care have been discussed below:

The first risk is people have the risk of losing their freedoms when the health and safety procedures are applied on the patients or the care users like, a woman who was a smoker since she was 11 was not allowed to go outside to smoke in the day centre and that actually upset her and it also affected her human rights (FAULKNER, Alison, 2012).}
This is a dilemma for the care taker because if the woman is allowed to smoke then it affect her health and if she is topped from smoking then this will affect her human rights and right to freedom. 
The second risk is fear as the care users feel that they have fears about their safety and their rights which can be lost because of the health and safety policy used by the care workers and this is another dilemma for them (FAULKNER, Alison, 2012).
The other dilemmas are (MITCHELL, Wendy and Glendinning, Caroline, 2007):
The right of the service users to take risks or to make choices versus the responsibility of the practitioners with a duty of care to protect the users from harm, The right of the service users to take risks versus the responsibility of the care workers to protect other that included the member of the community from potential danger, The right of the service users to take risks in their own homes versus the paid care workers to have a safe working environment (MITCHELL, Wendy and Glendinning, Caroline, 2007)
Effects of non-compliance with health and safety legislation in a health and social care workplace
The Health and Safety at Work Act 1974 according to this act the employer must:
Analyse the risks to employees, customers, partners and any other person, to arrange the effective planning, organising, control, monitoring and review of preventive and protective measures, To have a written health and safety procedure, to ensure the employees have access to safety policy, to consult the employees about their work and current preventive and protective measures.
If there is non-compliance of health and safety regulations then they would have serious effects that include sanctions, fines, imprisonment and disqualification.
The current case law has confirmed that the director cannot avoid a charge of neglect under section 37 of the Act. Those found guilty would be liable to get fine and imprisonment. The Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986 section 2(1) gives the courts the power to disqualify an individual and this includes health and safety offences (HSE, (n.d.)).
Corporate manslaughter and corporate homicide Act 2007: An offence committed where the organisation senior management had failed and there is gross breach of duty of care where there is death caused, here the maximum penalty is unlimited fine if there is non-compliance of the act (HSE, (n.d.)).

Case study on manslaughter: Lion steel limited worker Steven Berry died from his injuries after an accident that occurred on 28 may 2008 when he fell through a fibreglass roof light which was thirteen metres to the factory floor when he was carrying out repair works of the roof. The court convicted the company for corporate manslaughter and the company was fined £480,000 (CQMS, 2014).

Case Study 3

How health and safety practices are monitored and reviewed

Case study 3

In the newly built hospital the nurses reported the hoisting issues because of the carpet and this was a part of the review and monitoring of the risk issues where the nurses assessed the risk of the carpets and this helped in reaching correct judgements.
Monitoring and reviewing are important part of the health and safety practices and the Management of Health and Safety at work Regulations 1999 says that the employers must carry out risk assessments to eliminate the risks or minimise it (ATL, 2014).
Monitoring: it is an important to monitor and report health and safety practices, the monitoring of the practises can be done by ensuring:
That appropriate weight is given to reporting the preventive information and progress of training and maintenance programmes and incident data. Periodic audits of the effectiveness of management structures and risk controls for health and safety are carried out. The effective monitoring of sickness absence and workplace health could alert the authorities about the underlying problems (HSE, (n.d.)).
Reviewing: The health and safety practices should be reviewed on a regular basis and the following questions are asked on the review of the risk assessment:
Have there been any significant changes? Further improvements that can be made, do the care workers spotted a problem, was there anything learnt from the accidents? The review of the risk assessment should be up to date (HSE, 2014).
Effectiveness of Health and Safety policies and practices in the workplace in promoting a positive health and safety culture.
Impact of having HS policies and practices
The Health and Safety policies have helped the hospital in encouraging a safe working environment
These polices protect the care taker and the care giver
These polices helps in mentoring the hazards in the hospitals
These police protect the rights of the care giver and care taker
These polices helps in preventing accidents and deaths
They create a positive environment as they have encouraged a safe environment and the people can work there without any fear or danger and this also increase the efficiency of work
Management- help to create positive environment by following the recommendation of the health and safety polices. They should find out what their managers and employees believe about the health and safety and make clear to them what is expected of them in terms of health and safety values, beliefs attitudes and the practises
The IOSH recommends that the management and employers should follow the following recommendations to promote positive health and safety culture:
They should find out what their managers and employees believe about the health and safety and make clear to them what is expected of them in terms of health and safety values, beliefs attitudes and the practises.
The employer must consider the most correct interventions to address any differences between the expectations and reality in the organisation’s health and safety culture. Organisations are required to find the right balance between the decree, prescription and organisational learning and joint goal-setting as acknowledging the time that it’s likely will take to achieve the change. Also to take account of the influence of health and safety management systems and to audit it’s influences (IOSH, 2014).
Contribution in placing health and safety needs of individuals at the centre of practice
We would try to make a commitment for the promotion of the health and safety of the individuals in our centre of practise by making a commitment and by writing a policy that emphasizes the importance of the workplace safety and health. Encourage the employees to participate in health and safety programmes. If injury or illness is frequent then the employer will try to find out the reason. Would involve the employees in a health and safety practises. Would make sure the employees input and give feedback regarding their needs and issues related to health and safety. Would identify and would try to control the health and safety hazards in the workplace (SAFETY WORKS MAINE, 2013).
Duty of carer or nurse – contribution for HS
The carer need to adhere to this policy by taking care of their own and other people’s health and safety. To report any unsafe conditions, unsafe acts, defects, hazards and incidents. They should also attend relevant trainings and should be aware of any new development in the safety procedures.
What we need to m do to meet health and safety needs
We need to emphasize the importance of the workplace safety and health.
Encourage the employees to participate in health and safety programmes.
If injury or illness is frequent then the employer will try to find out the reason. Would involve the employees in a health and safety practises.
We need to make sure the employees input and give feedback regarding their needs and issues related to health and safety.
We need to identify and try to control the health and safety hazards in the workplace
What we are not doing:
We are doing regular risk assessments
We are doing regular risk assessments
We are not giving training to our staffs
The cares are not informing the authorities about the hazards present
The carers are not taking their work seriously and are not analysing the consequences of their negligence.

References

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