Health Surveillance
Health surveillance involves monitoring employees exposed to certain health risks or situations for early signs of work related illness or injury.
The information provided by such monitoring then allows employers to manage these risks and to ascertain whether control measures in place are working effectively.
Such surveillance also provides opportunity for employee feedback and offers a way of reinforcing health and safety messages to the workforce.
Exposure
Health surveillance is needed when employees are exposed to risks such as excessive noise, hand/arm vibration, solvents, fumes, dust, biological agents, asbestos or lead or if their work involves compressed air, ionising radiations or diving.
NB: this is not an exhaustive list; there may be other specific hazards in the workplace.
For exposure to risks such as manual handling or repeated stress, other health surveillance methods that are available include encouraging symptom reporting and checking sickness records.
Risk assessment
A risk assessment is the starting point in any health surveillance programme as it identifies health hazards in a workplace, employees at risk and measures needed to control or minimise the risks.
If the risks identified cannot be totally removed, employers should consider measures to safeguard employees’ health, which would include health surveillance.
Our credentials
Established in 1962, MOHS is an independent provider of occupational health, safety and screening services and medical expertise.
Our expertise enables us to work across a diverse cross section of organisations from large blue chip organisations and the public sector to small and medium enterprises.
We specialise in working in partnership with our clients to bring about measureable improvements in employee health, productivity, motivation and morale.
A registered charity, we are committed to the ethos of social enterprise. Any surplus income is invested back into our business to allow continual development and service improvement.
What we do
Our team of highly experienced occupational health advisors will work with an organisation to find the most cost effective and efficient way of delivering health surveillance through assessments which can include:
- hearing
- vision
- lung function
- biological monitoring
- effects of vibration
- drugs / alcohol screening
