Risk Assessment For Disability Support Work: Hazards And Risk Controls
Task or scenario
In this assignment, Oncall has been chosen as the workplace. It provides home support services (oncall.com.au, 2018). The paper will provide the risk assessment in a disability support work. Risk and hazards will be identified that the support workers face in managing disable people that are overweight.
|
Task or scenario |
Hazard/s |
Associated harm, e.g. what could go wrong? |
Existing Risk Controls |
Current risk rating Use the Risk Matrix |
Any additional controls are required? |
Residual risk rating Use the Risk Matrix |
|
Providing force to lift, move or transfer the people that are physically disable and overweight. |
Musculoskeletal injuries. |
During moving or lifting the disable patients that are overweight could lead to musculoskeletal injuries due to provide excessive force for twisting, lifting, pulling, and pushing the wheelchair and other moving equipment. |
In case of person that requires full support effective equipment is available for moving or lifting the wheelchair. |
Very high. |
Using overhead tracking hoist and wheelchair with electric motor could be used as the additional control. In addition effective training for managing the equipment is needed. |
Low |
|
Providing forceful motion or unexpected move in order to prevent the patients from falling. |
Risk of fall. |
High risk of falls is associated with the task such as preventing the patients from fall, thus the support workers might got minor to severe injury such as fracture in hand, leg and hip. The support worker might got brain injury in some severe cases such as fall in bathroom. |
Equipment such as walker, wheelchair and others are available to support the disable people to move and reduce the risk of fall. |
Very high. |
Man oeuvre need to be easy to use and alarm clock need to be placed in the bed or wheelchair to reduce the risk of fall. |
Moderate. |
|
Working in an awkward position for a long period of time in order to support the patient in dressing or undressing and taking meal. |
Strains in many parts of body. |
The support workers might suffer from strains in many body parts such as strains in neck, back and shoulders. |
Equipment such as electric stand chair, electric hi-lo bed. Leg lifter and standing hoist for lifting or supporting a person in standing position is available to reduce the effort of the support worker. |
High. |
Mobile sling hoist in order to transfer or move the patient and height adjustable ergonomic chair and proper training for equipment management could help to provide additional control. |
Low. |
In a diverse workplace female home support workers or disability support workers are found to be most vulnerable group. The risk of falls, musculoskeletal injury and strains in body parts is high in case of female disability support workers. It has been found that risk of injury during providing force to move, lift or transfer the disable patient from one place to another the female support workers are associated with high risk of unexpected injury. The risk of underlying injuries is very high for the female workers due to their physical anatomy (Vassos et al., 2013). In addition of the risks it has been found that training for equipment management is important for female disability support workers, however, most of the female workers do not attend or complete the training thus remain untrained and face enormous health and safety hazards in the workplace (Wark, Hussain & Edwards, 2014).
In order to reduce the risk of harm in the disability support work for female workers, effective equipment need to be provided to the workers, for example, electric wheelchair, overhead tracking hoist, Mobile sling hoist, electric stand chair, electric hi-lo bed, adjustable ergonomic chair and others. Such equipment would help to reduce the effort of the female workers in moving, lifting and transferring the patients from one place to another. Provide two support workers in case of patients that need full support for movement could be helpful (Harries et al., 2015). Proper training need to provided and before joining the training the information regarding the importance of training needs to be provided to the workers and the training process need to be updated regularly(Wark, Hussain & Edwards, 2014). Such strategies could help to minimize the risk associated with female support workers and improve health and safety in the workplace in an effective manner.
One of the agencies that govern the work health safety in the workplace in Australia is Safe Work Australia. The agency is a statutory agency of Australian Government that was established in the year 2009. The Safe work Australia made of state of territory and government, representatives of Commonwealth, The Australian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, The Australian Council of Trades Unions and the Australian Industry Group. The agency works with the state and territory government and the Commonwealth in order to improve the compensation arrangements of workers and improve the health and safety culture in the workplace. It is a not a regulator of work health and safety but a national policy body. The responsible authority for enforcing and regulating work health and safety laws in the jurisdiction of Australia is the Commonwealth, state and territories. The Safe Work Australia provides effective code of practice that provides guidelines to manage work health safety in an effective manner. The approved code of practice is a guideline to achieve the standards of safety and welfare in the workplace. The code of practice provided by the Safe Work Australia is applicable for all people that has duty of care according to the circumstances mentioned in the code. In most of the cases the approved code of practice achieves compliance with the health and safety duties mentioned in the Work Health Safety Act. The code of practice provided by the Safe Work Australia deal with some significant issues and does not consider all the hazards and risks that may arise in the workplace. It has been developed under the Council of Australian Governments’ Inter-Governmental Agreement for Regulatory and Operational Reform in Occupational Health and Safety in order to adapt by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments (worksafe.vic.gov.au, 2018).
Providing force to lift, move or transfer the people that are physically disable and overweight
One of the most effective policies for work health safety includes the Work health safety act, 2011. The main purpose of the act is to provide an effective and maintained framework to ensure the health and safety of the workers in the workplace. The framework includes-
- Provide protection to the workers and other people in the workplace against the harm to their health, welfare and safety by eliminating or diminishing the risk factors arising in the workplace.
- Providing effective and fair workplace culture and representation, cooperation and resolution of issues in the workplace related to health and safety factor.
- Inspiring the workers and the employers to promote the importance and improvement of work health safety in order to achieve healthier working environment.
- Providing adequate knowledge to the workers and the employers regarding the work health and safety.
By providing such guidelines the act helps to improve the work health and safety in the workplace and reduce the risk of hazards and risks in an effective manner (worksafe.qld.gov.au, 2018).
There are a number of risks associated with the people that works as a disability support worker. One of the most important risk to consider is the musculoskeletal injuries during providing excessive force to transfer, lift or move the person that are physically disable and overweight. During such task the, due to providing excessive force the support workers might got musculoskeletal injuries and could suffer from long term pain. The current risk rating of such risk is very high (Smyth, Healy & Lydon, 2015). Some effective risk controls are available such as equipment for moving or lifting the wheelchair to reduce the effort of the support workers. In addition modified equipment such as overhead tracking hoist and wheelchair with electric motor could be used to reduce the risk in an effective manner. The support workers need to be trained for using the equipment properly (Wark, Hussain & Edwards, 2014).
Another hazard is related to providing forceful motion or unexpected move in order to prevent the patients from falling. High risk of fall is associated with such task. In this case the support might got minor to severe injuries such as fractures in hand, leg and hip. In some severe cases major brain injury could occur, for example fall in bathroom (McCaughey et al., 2013). Effective assessment tools such as walker, wheelchair, and walking stick is available for helping the patent in movement and reducing the risk of fall. However, additional control such as easily usable man-oeuvre is needed. Alarm clock need to be placed with the patient or in the wheelchair or bed in order to reduce the risk of fall and effective training program need to be arranged for the support workers to train them about the proper use of such equipment (Wark, Hussain & Edwards, 2014). In current situation the risk rate is high, it is expected that after implementing additional controls the risk could be reduced.
It has been found in the risk assessment that working in an uncomfortable position for long hours for example during support the patient in taking meal, dressing or bathing could lead to strains of neck, back and shoulders and the support workers might suffer from unnecessary pain (McCaughey et al., 2013). To reduce the risk electric stand chair, electric hi-lo bed, leg lifter, standing hoist for supporting the patient in standing position is available. Furthermore, height adjustable ergonomic chair for the support workers and mobile sling hoist to transfer or move the patient could help to reduce the risk in an effective manner (Harries et al., 2015).
References:
Harries, J., Ng, K. Y. Y., Wilson, L., Kirby, N., & Ford, J. (2015). Evaluation of the work safety and psychosocial wellbeing of disability support workers. The Australasian Journal of Organisational Psychology, 8.
McCaughey, D., DelliFraine, J. L., McGhan, G., & Bruning, N. S. (2013). The negative effects of workplace injury and illness on workplace safety climate perceptions and health care worker outcomes. Safety science, 51(1), 138-147.
oncall.com.au (2018). ONCALL | Disability, NDIS & Welfare Services Melbourne. Retrieved from https://www.oncall.com.au/
Smyth, E., Healy, O., & Lydon, S. (2015). An analysis of stress, burnout, and work commitment among disability support staff in the UK. Research in developmental disabilities, 47, 297-305.
Vassos, M., Nankervis, K., Skerry, T., & Lante, K. (2013). Work engagement and job burnout within the disability support worker population. Research in developmental disabilities, 34(11), 3884-3895.
Wark, S., Hussain, R., & Edwards, H. (2014). The training needs of staff supporting individuals ageing with intellectual disability. Journal of Applied Research in Intellectual Disabilities, 27(3), 273-288.
worksafe.qld.gov.au (2018). Work Health and Safety Act 2011. Retrieved from https://www.worksafe.qld.gov.au/laws-and-compliance/workplace-health-and-safety-laws/laws-and-legislation/work-health-and-safety-act-2011
worksafe.vic.gov.au (2018). Disability services – WorkSafe. Retrieved from https://www.worksafe.vic.gov.au/disability-services