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Health Monitoring

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  • Health Monitoring

    Posted by tony beaumont on 23 January 2024 at 3:10 pm

    Hi all

    We are currently looking at our health monitoring programme and interested to hear from others on how often full medicals for field workers are undertaken.

    The Good Practice Guideline from Worksafe states that health monitoring should be undertake upon employment and then ‘on a regular (ongoing) basis

    ECP46 CODE OF PRACTICE for HIGH VOLTAGE LIVE LINE WORK states that:

    ‘A medical examination shall be carried out by a qualified occupational health practitioner to check that the lineworker can physically meet the requirements to carry out the intended work and has no medical condition that could affect the safety of the lineworker or the work team’,

    but there is no information relating to whether this is a one off – or regular screening is needed.

    Up until now we have been doing annual medicals for all field workers who undertake HV Live Line Work, along with those we believe will be exposed to critical risk on an ongoing basis – such as loud noise, airborne particles or hazardous substances.

    The problem we have is determining the need for each worker and applying a frequency.

    Annual checks may be too frequent. Hence we would like feedback on what others are doing.

    If you have varying frequencies for different roles, and want to break this down into role categories, that is OK and will prove even more helpful (e.g. linemen, techs, electricians etc).

    As an aside, we also provide 2-yearly general health checks for office-based workers, but do not make these mandatory. It is only information on the mandatory health monitoring that we seek feedback on thanks.

    If you also want to share what is covered in your medical exams that would be welcomed.

    Thanks in advance Tony Beaumont

    Robert Parton replied 1 year ago 4 Members · 3 Replies
  • 3 Replies
  • Graeme Johnson

    Member
    23 January 2024 at 3:19 pm

    Hi Tony

    Also reference the EEA guide ECP46 practice notes as it expands on ECP46 requirements and mandates annual medical assessments.

    Regards G

  • Stephen Small

    Member
    24 January 2024 at 4:01 pm

    Hi Tony

    Additionally if you have vegetation workers, accordiing to the ACOP for Safety and Health in Forestry Operations they are required to have baseline health assessments within 3 months of start date and annually thereafter. This is also cross referenced in the ACOP for Safety and Health in Arboriculture.

    Cheers’

    Stephen.

  • Robert Parton

    Member
    25 January 2024 at 7:27 am

    We do the standard baseline at pre-employment for ears, lungs, eyes, musculoskeletal, cholesterol, BP.

    This is generic across all field staff and clearly not all are related to understanding impact of risk exposure and control efficacy (e.g. eyes).

    Improvements we are working towards is to understand whether this is adequate for ECP46, whether we need to create cohorts of similar risk (e.g. only a small subset would be likely to be exposed to risk of NIHL but we test all and a small subset are exposed to potentially harmful wood dust which we may not be doing enough to monitor).

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