How quick did that first 4 months go?!
Although happy we are already looking forward to next Christmas’ holiday as our onsite hearing, medical and health assessment services have been in high demand keeping us quite busy.
The Corporate Health Professionals’ mobile OH&S facility has had the busiest start to a year ever. We have largely completed a Wheatbelt service trip where we conducted over 700 WorkCover Hearing tests for clients on various sites from Albany to Merredin to Geraldton to Perth and nearly everywhere in between.
As a part of the trip our regional Noise Surveying services continued to grow as more regional clients begin to recognize their legal obligations in relation to the hazard of Noise to which they are exposing their employees.. About 100 Lung function tests were also conducted on the regional trip largely as a part of Mine Workers Health Surveillance assessments (Mine Health Certificates). Somewhat concerning for a couple of clients were the results of vision screens conducted on mobile plant operators indicating a small number of employees who should have been wearing glasses while driving their very expensive equipment, some on public roads.
The Wheatbelt clients this year included a broad range of industry including local government, light industry, manufacturing, agriculture, infrastructure support companies and even some mining. Matt, our CHP Mobile Services Coordinator, has indicated that he now enjoys excellent working relationships with clients some of whom he has now visited 3 or 4 times over the last 5 years.
Back here in town (Perth) we have also conducted more WorkCover Hearing Tests, including over 40 Full Audios, and WorkSafe & DMP (Department of Mines and Petroleum) Noise Surveys in the first 4 months than ever before. Our Occupational Medical Assessment services clinic in Subiaco has steadily recovered from a slow 3rd ¼ last (??)year to be back flat out again. With the number of pre-employments being done at the clinic we are anticipating the employment market to tighten again soon.
We have started new, and progressed several, Health Surveillance programs already this year. These Health Surveillance for Substance Exposure programs, overseen by Roger Lai, our Occupational Physician.. have again demonstrated their worth and why they are legally required for workplaces with ‘hazardous substances’. Two of our programs in particular revealed “double edge sword” results for two clients who had an employees’ health deteriorate badly enough due to exposure (one to isocyanates in spray paint, one to acrylamides) that they have been recommended for re-deployment to a role without exposure. This was particularly tough for the spray painter who has been in the trade since he left school 15 years ago. Unfortunately it was a choice of change or have his work generated health issue become lifestyle and, more than likely ‘life’, threatening which of course is not good for him or our client.
Traditionally the last ¼ of the financial year sees interest in our ergonomic assessment (workstation assessments and manual handling training) services as clients use budgets on issues that are sometimes regarded as secondary in need to those legislated issues such as WorkCover Hearing tests and WorkSafe Noise Surveys. So our ergonomists are anticipating even busier times ahead.
With our annual Perth to the Pilbara mobile OH&S services trip coming up in August we expect the 3rd ¼ of the year will again see us busy doing more Mine Workers Health Surveillance and WorkCover Hearing tests onsite. Our FIFO Mine Health assessments service is still popular with a number of our clients as they treat us as their on-call staff when compliance assessments become backlogged or due. Late breaking news….., we have just renewed our support of the Sensear * personal hearing protection technology. We were motivated to do so after a recent Noise Survey at the Perth airport identified an inadequacy of the PHP that was being used by our client. We realized that Sensear , a PHP product that has Australian Standard, provides suitable level of dB attenuation in a very noisy environment while uniquely enhancing speech recognition allowing for good levels of effective communication utilising Bluetooth, Two-way, FM or face-to-face as is commonly used in the airport environment. The client involved is excited by the versatility of the product we have recommended.
As we at Corporate Health Professionals strive to provide further effective onsite hearing, medical, health and safety assessment solutions for you, our valued clients, goodluck for the rest of 2010.
Cheers
Mark Mason
PS: * If you want a demonstration of the Sensear hearing protection equipment (with the very new state-of-art enhanced communication) drop us a line!!
Comments
Post has no comments.