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Occupational Health
Caring for the health, safety and welfare of your employees makes good business sense. The benefits can be seen in motivation, productiveness, efficiency and attendance at work.
Bedford occupational health services first opened in 1968, originally it was established to serve the employment and health needs of Bedford Hospital employees. In recent years it has expanded to provide specialist services to external employers and individuals throughout the country.
Bedford occupational health services staff are highly trained and skilled, several with specialist qualifications at degree level. Providing expert cost effective services, which are specifically designed to meet the needs of individual clients in an effort to reduce accidents, illness and absenteeism in the work place.
To request a brochure and price list, please click on the link below and send us your postal and/or email address details.
occupational.health@bedfordhospital.nhs.uk
Occupational health has a variety of functions, principally these can be summarised into:
1. Ensuring that the workforce is fit for the job they are employed to do; that the workplace is fit for its purpose and neither has a negative impact on the other.
2. Fitness relates to both the mental and physical fitness of an individual and the retention of this fitness requires occupational health to be proactive, preventative, monitoring, adaptive and advisory. So you should expect a practitioner to monitor the health of the employees, monitor the environment in which they work, advise on the adaptation of work to the capabilities of the worker and advise management on all aspects of employee health in relation to their work.
It is apparent from this description that occupational health does not work in isolation, nor is one practitioner likely to have all the answers. So, occupational health should always work as an integral part of organisational policy and procedures, there should be strong consultation and association with the HR function and obviously, the health and safety practitioners. It is a joint responsibility getting to the position where all these functions work in a common framework and you as an employer have evidence of your duty of care, whilst the employee has a clear view of their own responsibilities to themselves and others.
To print a form, please click on one of the following links:
Pre-employment health risk assessment
The employer has specific obligations to the employee for consent and confidentiality.
Consent
Any activity carried out by an occupational health professional to an individual employee will require the employee’s informed consent. By informed consent we mean that the employee knows why he or she is seeing the occupational health professional and has agreed to the medical, consultation or assessment.
It is incumbent on the company to inform the employee as to the reasons why they have been referred; this provides the employee with the opportunity to refuse consent.
Certain activities do contain implied consent. For example, pre-employment questionnaires, night worker questionnaires, health promotion activities and lifestyle medicals, all imply consent by completing the form or attending the medical.
From time to time it is necessary to obtain an individual’s specific consent for further activities. For example, to enable the health professional to obtain information from the individual’s own medical practitioners (Access to Medical Reports Act 1988). For these activities specifically worded consent forms are used by the occupational health practitioner depending on the activity required.
Confidentiality
All medical information held by the occupational health department, whether verbal or written, whether from the individual or other medical establishment is held in strict confidence. The records are held for varying lengths of time between 10 and 40 years, depending on current legislation. They can only be accessed by outside parties with the fully informed written consent of the individual or by a Court Order. The occupational health notes of a company can be passed onto a subsequent contracted occupational health provider, again by written consent from the individual employee.
No information is passed to the employee’s management without the employee’s consent.
Occupational health assessment reports are not subject to The Access to Medical Reports Act, however, occupational health ethical guidelines indicate that employees should be aware of the information and that, if requested, access should be available to the individual.
