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David Ireland
Member - 7 posts
Although the article mentions 'no win, no fee' solicitors, for me it is more about claimants making claims against organisations when in reality they may have created the problem themselves.
I work for the Public Sector, we regularly get claims made against our organisation.
Unfortunately, some of these claims we lose; mainly I have to say because that there was no risk assessment in place. One example, in a recent case a visitor allegedly broke their little finger on a hand rail whilst walking down the stairs. The stairs have been in place for the best part of 40 years, no-one has ever previously been injured by the hand rail. When I and my colleagues(risk and safety specialists) looked at the handrail we still could not see how someone would break their finger. However as we didn't have a risk assessment in place, for what the judge said was a 'foreseeable risk' we lost the case and compensation had to be paid. In addition the judge made comment that the hand rail should be replaced, at great expense for one minor incident in 40 years. The judge had not seen the hand rail and was basing this on a very biased case.
I am a great advocate of health and safety, however rulings like this make a mockery of the importance of the legislative system. The process for risk assessment is to manage the most significant risk, not all risk. Spending ridiculous amounts of money on minor risk areas means that money is not then available for more important work, the pot has limited depth.
Solicitors, well you guys are in business and I can understand that if you see a case that can be won, you will go for it. I do however agree that 'no win, no fee' has increased the claims profile of organisations such as the one I work for.
Let us hope that this changes in the future, although I doubt it.
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David Ireland
Member - 7 posts
I would recommend that you think more about your duties under the Occupiers Liability Act here rather than traditional health and safety legislation. One of my previous employers had compensation claims made (succesfully) against them under OLA for not having an Ice and Snow gritting Policy and not having a contingency for gritting in icy conditions.
Kevin makes a good point that this is a foreseeable risk.
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David Ireland
Member - 7 posts
Talk to your occupational health service, if you don't have one I suggest you think seriously about getting one. I work for an NHS Trust, one of the departments I manage is OH and we do drug and alcohol testing for internal and external clients. The other thing that you need to think about is what the company policy is, ie if you do not have a policy document to guide your practice you really should think about instigating one.
Your local NHS Trust occupational health service may be able to help, not all are registered to undertake chain of custody drug and alcohol testing.
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David Ireland
Member - 7 posts
Tracy,
I don't think any of the previous posts really disagree with your comment, I think we all agree that bullying, harrasment etc is not acceptable in any walk of life. I served for 23 years in the Army and believe that most of it in my experience was picked up and dealt with quickly.
However like the good Mr Porteous I was at Twickenham a week last Saturday, heartened by the amount of serving and ex-military present to support their comrades. The rub is that you can get £400,000 for this breach of the law which had limited harm to the individual, our military colleagues coming back from Iraq or Afganistan who have lost limbs and in some cases have life long mental health problems get at best c£160,000 that is criminal!
It is about thime the Government of the day started to value the armed services.
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David Ireland
Member - 7 posts
The key question here is who are the gloves protecting? And from what?
I partly agree with the previous comments about COSHH, unfortunately it is often the case that the gloves worn by staff when undertaking hazardous tasks do not conform to the correct British Standard and therefore the gloves are often not doing what they were supposed to i.e. protect the individual.
Hospital practice for many years became 'universal precautions' which meant that the first thing that staff reached for were latex gloves, many of the tasks do not need gloves but good hand hygiene.
Latex gloves are currently the target of the HSE, especially in hospitals, Improvement Notices have been served.
My organisation has moved away from a) using gloves as a first course of action and b) latex gloves are no longer available unless they can be justified for clinical reasons.
As the thread seemed to start about kitchens and gloves I have just remembered being in the supermarket on Saturday and watching the man on the meat counter using a disposable glove which he didn't remove, picking up the meat, then using the same gloved hand to use the till to get the label and adhere that to the packaging, doing exactly the same for the person behind me! Not quite sure who or what he thought the glove was protecting as each time he touched the till he was potentially cross contaminating!
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David Ireland
Member - 7 posts
I can respond to the point about shoe cleanliness. In areas that are sterile such as theatres, staff are required to wear specific theatre shoes, and these are washed. In the hospital I work we have shoe washers for these areas so that the shoes can be kept clean. Visitors in such areas are required to wear disposable overshoes or to change into scrubs and put on theatre specific shoes.
With regard to general areas there is no greater risk from clinical staff wearing outdoor shoes than from the hospital visitors walking the wards visiting their relatives. Hospitals are a workplace and although special attention can be paid to sterile or greater risk areas such as theatres it is impossible to be risk free. This is where good cleaning regimes come into their own and regular high standards of cleaning will help reduce the spread of infection.
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David Ireland
Member - 7 posts
With regard to appropriate footwear - which I believe is where this strand started. It basically comes back to risk assessment - if the manager/specialist undertaking the risk assessment understands the risks the person undertaking the role is faced with it is then much easier to decide what sort of footwear is appropriate.
I have been in risk management for many years and have seen a number of injuries which have been caused by inappropriate footwear - nurses wearing open toe shoes and one who dropped an unsheathed needle which went into her unprotected toe, another in catering wearing trainers with next to no grip, another in the estates function moving heavy items who dropped one and broke his toe and wearing shoes with no toe protection, a nurse wearing ballet type shoes who walked into a bed end and broke her toe, etc etc........ The whole principle is that once we had investgated these incidents it was obvious that a) the managers had no control and didn't understand the risks their colleagues faced and b) did not understand the concept of PPE. In catering we have now insisted on non-slip footwear, we currently use shoes for crews, which are excellent. In estates they all have appropriate footwear to suit their tasks - in nursing a bit more difficult to get any standardisation even though there is a uniform policy which says wear 'sensible shoes' what ever they are! Certainly they are not high heels, flip flops or ballet shoes - equally they are not toe steel protected boots.
As a parting shot, I would not be recommending crocs or anythingsimilar for anyone working in hospitality, hospitals or anywhere else. Great for social wear but a) they do not fit well so increase the risk of turning an ankle or b) the ones with holes in provide next to no protection against spills.
I am sure someone will disagree - but we are all entitiled to our opinion.
Helen, I hope you get your problem sorted.
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