Category: health

Structural v Individual approaches to preventing psychological harm persist

At the end of September 2018 the Australian Psychological Society held its 2018 Congress.  As conferences do, various media statements are released to generate interest in the speakers.  One caught the attention of this blog.  It was released on September 25 2018, and was called:

“Resilience isn’t enough to combat the effects of burnout, world renowned psychology expert says”

This sounded like it may look closely at the prevention of harm and SafetyAtWorkBlog was able to interview that world-renowned psychology expert,

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Mixed bag conference format succeeds

The Safety Institute of Australia (soon to be trading as the Australian Institute of Health and Safety) conducted its Perth Safety Symposium on September 28 2018.  It was the event’s second year and, overall, was a success.  But how does one measure the success of a one-day conference?

Firstly, one has to have an interesting and, if possible, fascinating pool of speakers. The keynote speakers included:

Simon Millman MLA represented the West Australia Premier Continue reading “Mixed bag conference format succeeds”

The jury remains out on standing desks but maybe we are asking the wrong questions

The 20th Congress of the International Ergonomics Association in Florence Italy recently concluded.  Australia’s Professor David Caple attended and brought the latest research into the benefits of sit/stand desks to the September meeting of the Central Safety Group in Melbourne.  Caple said that evidence remains confusing on this increasingly popular piece of office furniture and echoed the modern approach to occupational health and safety (OHS) matters – look at what the work involves and how and where people do it.

Caple explained how large companies are moving away from open-plan offices to those designed around “activity-based work or

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Could your company manage an embarrassing workplace injury?

Every man is aware of his penis and scrotum from a very early age. Male genitals do not feature often in discussions about occupational health and safety (OHS) but there was a workplace incident in the United States around 1970 that gained considerable attention but not really from the OHS perspective.  I have always thought this incident would be a useful case study for discussing how this scenario would be managed today.

In 1991 the journal “Medical Aspects of Human Sexuality” Dr William A Morton Jr. wrote of an unusual medical case.  Basic a worker ripped open his scrotum while using a conveyor belt to masturbate.  He was so embarrassed about the incident, he stapled his scrotum back together and told no one of the incident.  I encourage readers to go to the full article at Snopes.com (some may find the details confronting), where Snopes verified the truth of the story, but the industrial crux of the incident is: Continue reading “Could your company manage an embarrassing workplace injury?”

Safety At Work Talks – Eldeen Pozniak

Canadian safety professional, Eldeen Pozniak, has been touring the Australian and New Zealand occupational health and safety conference over the next few weeks.  I was able to have a coffee with her earlier this week in Melbourne where we talked about

  • HSE credibility
  • Royal Family security logistics
  • Paw Patrol and OHS education
  • ISO45001, and
  • The workplace impacts of Canada’s impending legalisation of cannabis.

Workplace Health Management programs save one hospital around $200k

It is always good to see researchers assessing issues related to workplace health and safety rather than relying on overseas data.  Recently researchers from the Australian Catholic University and St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne looked into “measuring the effectiveness of workplace health management programs” .  The research adds to our understanding of these programs but the relevance to occupational health and safety (OHS) is limited.

The researchers,

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Firefighting, WorkCover and OHS

Melbourne, Victoria, Australia – 2011 July 10: Fire fighters supporting colleague on roof gaining access to a garage on fire in an residential area.

Some years ago there was a rumour that no workers’ compensation claims by firefighters employed by the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) were investigated and/or rejected by the MFB. The reason was that the United Firefighters’ Union would question any investigation on behalf of its members which would likely result in increased industrial relations tension.

Workers compensation data obtained by SafetyAtWorkBlog from the MFB under Freedom of Information seems to have scotched that rumour but does provide some interesting information which may also justify radical workplace health and safety thinking for this sector.

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