Health Care: Hospital Professionals Division

Health & Safety
 

December 15, 2008 Ontario Hospital Association Health & Safety Bulletin.

November 21, 2007 Ontario Hospital Association Health & Safety Bulletin.

This bulletin is provided so that members and local JHSC representatives, can be aware of some of the health and safety information that the OHA provides to its member hospitals.

OPSEU does not necessarily endorse the contents.

An Introduction to the HPD
Joint Central Committee on Health & Safety

May, 2007

The Joint Central Committee on Health and Safety (JCCHS) was created by OPSEU and the Ontario Hospital Association as a result of an August 29, 2003 Letter of Understanding between the parties. The Committee had its inaugural meeting in May, 2004. The mandate of the JCCHS is to gather information, discuss and make recommendations to the OHA’s Health and Safety Advisory Committee on matters affecting the health and safety of OPSEU-represented employees in the hospital sector. (For a more detailed description of the JCCHS, see the Committee’s Terms of Reference document posted on this website.)

Currently, OPSEU member representatives on the JCCHS are Brendan Kilcline (Local 444, Kingston General Hospital) and Joan Murray (Local 425, Brockville General Hospital). Brendan is the OPSEU co-chair of the JCCHS and is the Health and Safety representative on the Hospital Professionals Division executive. Lisa McCaskell, Senior Health and Safety Officer, acts as the OPSEU staff resource to the Committee.

The OHA is represented by Terry McMahon, Grey Bruce Health Services, and John Pellegrino, Niagara Health System.

The Committee meets quarterly; minutes of the meetings are posted on this website. In its first two years, the Committee agreed to recommend to the OHA’s Health and Safety Advisory Committee that: (a) member hospitals initiate a hospital-wide risk assessment for sharps injuries; (b) to encourage hospitals to implement the EPINet sharps injury surveillance system; and (c) to initiate programs to introduce safety engineered medical devices before the end of 2005 to reduce sharps injuries (Item 5, January 7, 2005 minutes). OPSEU representatives have also reached an agreement with the OHA that future OHA communiqués regarding hospital health and safety will be forwarded to local Joint Health and Safety Committees as well as to hospital senior management (Item 2c, March 4, 2005 minutes).

 OPSEU has also raised and reviewed with the OHA many other issues including:

·         Sharps and needle-stick accident prevention and Safety Engineered Medical Devices (ongoing)

·         Employers’ obligations under OHSA to report workplace injuries and illnesses (issue raised at June 2005 meeting and subsequent meetings until Sept 2006). OPSEU did not reach agreement with the employer representatives to prepare and distribute through the OHA a JCCHS communiqué reminding hospitals of these obligations.

·         Pandemic Influenza Planning and Respiratory Protection (ongoing)

·         Employer responsibility under OHSA to appoint competent supervisors and how this relates to the training and responsibilities of Charge/Senior positions (May 2006)

·         Patient lifting devices (June 2006)

·         WSIB Safety Groups Initiative (standing item)

OPSEU JCCHS members have also attended and presented at the Health & Safety professionals workshops at the OHA’s annual Health Achieve Convention.

Preliminary Report of the Sonographer (Ultrasound technologist) Ergonomics Project

In June of 2005 the committee reviewed WSIB statistics for occupational groups represented by OPSEU in the hospital sector. When we reviewed the data, the committee found it interesting that the WSIB data did not show a particularly high incidence of Lost Time Injuries among sonographers, contradicting a number of published reports in the health and safety literature about high rates of musculoskeletal injuries among this group of workers. The JCCHS agreed that further investigation was needed (Item 4c, June 10, 2005) and over a number of meetings developed an investigation strategy. First, we decided that it would be useful to have a number of ergonomic assessments performed of sonography work areas to discover what sorts of equipment and work processes were being used . Accordingly, the committee through local JHSCs requested Occupational Health Clinics for Ontario Workers (OHCOW) to do ergonomic assessments at four acute care hospitals.

Additionally, the Committee developed two separate surveys to investigate whether sonographers were reporting work-related pain and injuries to supervisors and WSIB, and to discover what kind of attention was being paid to ergonomics – equipment, training, work organization – in hospitals. A short survey from the JCCHS requesting information from JHSCs about injuries among sonographers was sent out in November, 2006. And a more detailed web-based survey for individual sonographers was launched by OPSEU in December, 2006. One serious finding is that sonographers who responded to the surveys report that most of them are working in pain and yet few are reporting their pain and injuries to supervisors or to WSIB.

 In September, 2006 the ergonomic assessments of sonography worksites started coming in and were reviewed by the committee. The reports identified many areas of concern including poorly designed equipment, non-adjustable equipment, crowded work areas, high work volumes, lack of recovery time between procedures and understaffing. The committee has learned that in at least two of the hospitals where the ergonomic assessments were done, employers have implemented at least some of the recommendations in the reports. These include increased staffing, new equipment and better work scheduling/organization.

OPSEU members of the JCCHS will provide a more thorough report of the Sonographer Ergonomics Project in the months to come. It is our goal to promote the findings and outcomes of the project to ensure that the lessons learned are widely available and applied throughout our sector.

Ongoing Work for JCCHS

OPSEU will continue to focus on developing strategies to present to employer representatives to reduce the toll of work-related injuries and illnesses within the sector. If OPSEU Local Joint Health and Safety Committee representatives have unresolved health and safety queries or concerns that they believe may have a provincial impact, they should forward them to an OPSEU member of the JCCHS or to staff resource Lisa McCaskell.

Contact Information:

Joan Murray

murjo@bgh-on.ca

Lisa McCaskell OPSEU Head Office 416-443-8888 x 8772

lmccaskell@opseu.org