Dealing with difficult issues

Part one: stress, conflict and fitness for interview

Summary:

OH professionals will be all too familiar with difficult and sensitive issues arising when assessing employees’ fitness for work, or fitness for a disciplinary hearing. In the first of a series on difficult issues, Alan Black provides an invaluable insight into how to get it right.

SEEING employees on behalf of employers for the purpose of assessing fitness for work when the individual is currently off sick, or when their attendance or performance is a cause for concern, is a core function of most occupational health departments. The interview and subsequent assessment can, however, present some difficulties for the unwary OH practitioner – and these can impede…

Dr Alan Black is an accredited specialist in occupational medicine working in the independent sector in Northern Ireland.

Author: Black A

Tags fitness for work stress

Occupational Health at Work August/September 2008 (vol. 05/2) pp24-27

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