Health surveillance means monitoring the health of people to detect signs or symptoms of work related ill-health so that steps can be taken to eliminate, or reduce, the probability of harm. Simply put, it has to do with the effect of work on an employee’s health.
Health surveillance is an important part of a health and safety management system. It is a proactive approach which should normally detect early signs of disease in your employees before the symptoms become serious. This should enable you to take appropriate action to prevent significant illness developing, thereby benefiting both the employee(s) concerned and your company as a whole.
Health surveillance can provide important data to reduce the risk of injury or ill-health, especially where there is not much information available about the factors involved (e.g. substances, where mixtures are used). For a summary on health surveillance, see HSE's Understanding health surveillance at work.
Health surveillance should be conducted by a qualified occupational health professional or, in some cases, by a suitably qualified ‘responsible’ person.
A responsible person is a line manager or someone in a similar position, who has been trained to look for early indications where someone is working with something that could harm their health. For example, checking for skin damage on operatives’ hands where solvents are being used. If the responsible person detects an abnormality, the employee is then referred to an occupational health professional.
Where the need for health surveillance is identified, usually from a risk assessment or at the onset of symptoms, a number of questions need to be answered:
- What symptoms are anticipated?
- What controls are recommended in the relevant risk assessment and are these controls being effectively used?
- Are the symptoms occurring even though the controls are being effectively used? This could indicate that the person concerned is (or has become) sensitised to something in the process concerned. If this is the case, the person may have to be removed from the area/process (see sickness absence and rehabilitation).
- Who will be conducting the surveillance and are they competent? (I.e. Have they been properly trained, has that training been recorded and is any refresher training needed?)
- How often should the surveillance be conducted and are the results being recorded?
- Is there a form (e.g. health surveillance record form) used for recording the results and are the forms filed in the appropriate personnel files and kept for the required period (up to 40 years)?
- What action can be taken to eliminate or reduce the identified symptoms?
It is likely that you will need advice from an occupational health professional to answer some of the above questions.