PERSONAL LEARNING ZONE

Summary:

This issue of Occupational Health [at Work] features a Personal Learning Zone (PLZ) article recommended for continuing professional development (CPD). The assignment questions, ‘Personal learning statement’ and ‘Certificate of engagement’ are available to subscribers as part of the PLZ. These will be stored in your password-protected PLZ. The PLZ will help you document your own CPD. Occupational health physicians and nurses, occupational hygienists and other professionals can use the resource in support of their specialism’s revalidation or CPD requirements

FEATURED ARTICLE

Pages 17–35. COVID-19 – back to work. As COVID-19 restrictions are relaxed, OH professionals will be called on to advise employers and workers on how infection risks can continue to be managed while ensuring business continuity. Likely topics include managing a return to work for clinically extremely vulnerable workers, compulsory vaccination, homeworking health and safety, asymptomatic testing, practicalities of health surveillance, infection control and future planning.

ADDITIONAL CPD 

The following articles, news and research items are suggested reading for CPD and professional revalidation. Subscribers can complete their online Personal Learning Zone CPD record at here 

Pages 12–13. It is important that employers and employment agencies do not breach the Equality Act 2010 (EqA) by asking questions about a job applicant’s health or disability: before it has made a conditional or unconditional offer of employment; or before including them in a pool of successful applicants for agency/bank work. A provider of care workers was sanctioned by the EHRC for such a breach.

Pages 13–15. The Employment Appeal Tribunal has considered a case where an employee had travelled from the UK to Pakistan for a ‘therapeutic break’.

Pages 36–40. Nominal group technique is a democratic process that can be used to develop and gain consensus in stakeholder groups, on issues such as policy and practice, while ensuring that everyone’s voice is heard.

Pages 41–43. Gender reassignment is one of the nine protected characteristics under the EqA and employers need to ensure that transgender employees are not discriminated against or harassed at work. But philosophical belief is also a protected characteristic. In Forstater v CGD Europe, the EAT examined the right to hold a genuine philosophical belief in the context of a wider debate about the rights of transgender people.

Pages 44–46. Our compendium of recent research includes a study examining the factors that influence return-to-work time following treatment for a mental health condition.

Author: The At Work Partnership Ltd

Occupational Health at Work August/September 2021 (vol. 18/2) pp47

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