Health and safety: mind the gap!
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What's this webinar about?
Society, and work, have changed radically over the last century. Demographics, better living conditions, safer jobs and improved medical care mean that people are living longer than ever before, and increasingly with long-term medical conditions. As the current crisis in health and social care illustrates, there are worsening strains on public services as a result. Helping to keep people in work to the greatest possible extent despite their health problems – to reduce costs to employers and the state, and to maximise tax revenues for the exchequer – is becoming an urgent social policy objective.
So, how effective is the traditional ‘health and safety’ approach, used by employers and occupational health services, at helping to keep people well and in work? In the UK about 70% of all sickness absence is the result of ‘common health problems’ – typically minor, short-lived and spontaneously resolving conditions such as backache that, in many cases, don’t need to prevent the person from working. Why do they remain the cause of so much absence – is ‘health and safety’ working… and might it even be making things worse?
Date
Friday 17 February 2017
Panellist
Dr Adrian Massey, BSc BM MRCP FFOM, Deputy Chief Medical Officer GMC No. 4423429, Duradiamond Health Partners