Working Well Sometimes..‪.‬ Jane Coombs

Musculo-Skeletal Disorders or MSDs are top of the pops for work related ill health and absence. What are they? Should you be worried? This episode is for anyone who has responsibility for health and safety in the workplace.

There are examples of types of MSDs and what jobs or tasks can cause them plus the two main ways of dealing with them.

For more information and links mentioned in this podcast go to the associated blog posts on Working Well Solutions

NICE (National Institute of Health and Care Excellence) defines a clinical audit as follows:
Audit in healthcare is a process used by health professionals to assess, evaluate and improve care of patients in a systematic way. Audit measures current practice against a defined (desired) standard. It forms part of clinical governance, which aims to safeguard a high quality of clinical care for patients
Recently I’ve had several requests regarding how to audit occupational health practice. The first question to me was 'How on earth do you audit an occupational health service which has never had an audit before? Where do you start?'
Here I take you through a simple and pragmatic way of auditing an occupational health service to improve consistency and quality over your whole organisation or maybe just one process which needs modifying.
Audit is a daunting task if you’ve never done it before but if you use a stepped approach, it becomes simpler. The hardest part being the planning. If you’ve audited nothing before in your organisation, start with something simple and small.
The fours steps are:
1. Planning the audit, 
2. Doing the audit, 
3. Checking against the standards and 
4. Action, that is, correcting all the things you've discovered aren't compliant with what you wanted.
To illustrate my four step approach, I will go through a clinical notes audit because every OH service keeps clinical notes and, being a paper exercise, will not interfere with day to day work.
How to decide what needs auditingFind out what you need to do at each stage and why Issues to avoid and problems which can occurNo long words to confuse you Links to research and the checklist from my website blog which accompanies this podcast: Download the Free Notes Audit Checklist here
Read the full article which accompanies this podcast with much more detail here.
Further Reading/Resources to help with Audit:
Faculty of Occupational Medicine advice on Data Protection in Occupational HealthSee also SEQOHS website for accrediting your OH services at www.seqohs.orgAudit and audit cycle for Medical Professionals on the Patient websiteBest Practice in Clinical Audit from Healthcare Quality Improvement PartnershipIntroduction to Clinical Audit in OH from my websiteA brief summary of Plan, Do, Check, Act from the HSE

Early on in the pandemic, speculation about how badly Covid-19 affected those from ethnic minorities was rife but once identified, interest and how best to assess the risk and protect these workers started.
There is a great system which many use and I share it here. Just to be clear I am not claiming any glory, this system is not mine to claim, but this article spreads the word (especially to my worldwide audience) and helps those from less informed backgrounds of where to start with these complex ethnic minority risk assessments.

ALAMA Website
Most clinicians use the ALAMA guidelines.
First to assess risk (based on gender, body mass index, race, pregnancy, and underlying health conditions)Quantify individual risks into high, medium, low risk of having a serious effect on the worker (vulnerability).In each risk group there are simple control methods to adopt.To do the assessment, it helps if you have medical or nursing training because sometimes you have to make a clinical judgement based on conflicting factors. But if you have nothing else - follow the guidance.

To read the associated blog: The Easy Way to Protect your Ethnic Minorities from Covid19

Or if you just want the links - look down

Links to Resources
ALAMA websiteDownloadable questionnaire on the ALAMA websiteNHS Infographic "impact of Covid19 on BAME staff in NHSCohorting patients in a clinical settingPregnancyAdvising of current guidelines to protect yourself and others, e.g. social distancing, hand-washing, self-isolatingPersonal protective equipment at work from the HSEGet a free NHS test to see if you have corona virusTest and trace procedures how it all worksAdvice for different workplaces about working safely from Gov UKBMI CalculatorNHS Risk Assessment GuidanceRead the article from the Civil Service: Please don't call me BAME or BME (Black, Asian, Minority Ethnic)

The Corona Virus pandemic has affected people in many ways - physically, mentally and emotionally. Me too. If you are experiencing effects of this then you might want to consider building up your resilience with tools and insights.

In this episode I recommend my go-to resources that have helped me over the years and may help you too.

This week, I saw recommendation on Quora as a life changing book The Inside Out Revolution and it reminded me of a book I'd read 15 years ago.  A hardback. I couldn't find it. So I looked through my Kindle library and found the ebook version: 'Somebody Should Have Told Me' by Jack Pranksy.
I cannot believe I forgot this book because it started me off on my journey of mindfulness and meditation. Since then, I have read over a hundred. 

Find out the other resources for mindfulness and resilience in the show notes on my website here:  🌈 And remember to keep safe.

The most popular article on my blog is where I describe reflection using my adapted Gibbs model for reflection and a worked example.

It also advertises my Nurses Reflection Diary Workbook which is available from Amazon and my best-selling book.

To add to my worked example I add another one today - regarding an incident between me, my manager and a sales executive where I worked at the time. I call it... 

Dog Walking.

To read a more comprehensive analysis of the incident and relevant links read my blog post (which accompanies this podcast) called Reflection Practice for Nurses: Worked Example 3.  Click this link.

Resource List
NMC Code of Practise on-lineNMC Guidance Sheet - Reflection PracticeReflection 1 Worked Example: Night Duty Drug RoundReflection 2 Worked Example: My Infographic ErrorNurses Reflection Diary - Revalidation Workbook by Jane Coombs available from Amazon for only £4.99 - buy your copy today

I’ve worked in occupational health (OH) for years and advised many companies. Some businesses put OH in the H&S department and some in HR; only once was I in the Facilities department which was strange. You would think it wouldn’t matter where occupational health and wellbeing services might sit; but you would be wrong. There are distinct differences on how each function operates, and it isn’t just about the personality of those in charge.
HR and H&S have different priorities and given higher authority in the business depending on the industry. For example, when I worked in Constructing Better Health (CBH) – I worked with H&S professionals but in local government and the NHS it was always HR.
Listen to this podcast to see what I (an experienced OH practitioner and qualified safety professional) think is better and why.

Other references:
High Speed 2Health and Safety at Work ActThe Good, the Bad, and the Smugly - Behind the Doors of Occupational Health - true stories of my time in OH, available to buy from AmazonRead the script to the full podcast on my blog