Hospital Pharmacist | News: New guidance on dealing with work related upper limb disorders published

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Hospital Pharmacist
Vol 9 No 3 p61-62
March 2002

Related websites
Health & Safety Executive (www.hse.gov.uk)

New guidance on dealing with work related upper limb disorders published

The Health and Safety Executive has published guidance on managing and treating work related upper limb disorders (ULDs), including repetitive strain injury (RSI).

The guidance sets out a management approach designed to reduce the risk and impact of ULDs in the workplace. For employers, the stages of this approach include understanding the conditions; creating the right organisational environment to tackle the disorders; assessing the risk of ULDs; reducing the risk of ULDs; educating and informing employees; managing any incidents; and carrying out regular checks to monitor progress.

Launching the guidance, Dr Alan Whitehead, Minister for Health and Safety, said that ULDs in the workplace are not trivial, or the inevitable consequences of working life. "They are as unacceptable as the old industrial diseases were in the past."

Pharmacy staff engaged in aseptic dispensing, which often involves repetitive activities, are at risk of RSI. This issue of HP contains an article which reports on a survey that examined the nature and incidence of RSI-type pain (PDF* 85K).

The Health and Safety Commission has published specific criteria for deciding whether to prosecute or investigate for breaches of health and safety law. A prosecution would normally take place when a workplace death is caused by a breach of the law, if there has been reckless disregard of health and safety requirements, and if the offender's standard of health and safety management is far below what is required.

Decisions on whether to investigate a workplace incident should take into account the severity and scale of the incident as well as actual harm, the offender's previous safety record and the wider relevance of the incident, including the public concern it causes.

* PDF files on PJ Online require Acrobat Reader 4 or later.