Annual Report 2010 - St. James's Hospital

Corporate Division Reports I Human Resources
Key services provided by the Department include:
• Assessing occupational hazards - which can be
Physical, biological (blood borne pathogens), Chemical
or psychosocial
• Vaccination programme for Hepatitis B
• TB screening and contact tracing after exposure to TB
• Care of staff post Percutaneous and splash
exposure injuries
• Counselling services linked with our EAP (Employee
Assistance Programme) were provided throughout the year.
This continued to be very successful and well received by
staff. It is very client focused, providing a choice of in-house
(80% of attendees) or outside attendance
• Staff education and training (nurses, doctors, care
attendants, medical, nursing students)
• VDU related eyesight screening
• Varicella, Measles, Mumps and Rubella screening
and vaccination
• Travel Vaccinations for occupational purposes only
• In-post medical examinations
• Management Referrals for assessment of fi tness to work
Developments in 2010
• The total attendance at OHD/Clinics was 3,994 which
is a decrease from 5,139 in 2009 – a drop of 22%. This
is predominantly due to a reduction in attendance at
the Nurses’ clinic because of the decline in recruitment
and the fact that more items are screened at each visit,
i.e. screening for TB, immunity to various infections and
phlebotomy making the visits more effi cient. Attendance at
the Occupational Health Consultant’s clinic increased by 3%
Straightforward cases were vaccinated in the external areas
but if there were any potential problems, they then attended
the OHD. The ongoing target is to have 30% of all staff
vaccinated which is the level where decrease in sickness
absence and transmission to patient, occurs
• A new initiative was introduced whereby all staff members
who had adverse incidents in the hospital were contacted
by one of the 2 CNS’s and were referred if appropriate, to
the Occupational Health Consultant
• It is now possible to validate and follow up on all blood
results on the EPR system with a direct link to the Viral
Reference Laboratory, saving valuable time by cutting
out phone calls and helping to make the department
“paper-light”
• The OHD targeted evidence of immunity to Varicella
(chicken pox) in doctors; though the vast majority (over
90%) is immune, there is no documented evidence of this
in 48% of doctors and therefore this will be the focus of
another audit for 2011
• There has also been a change in the method of screening
for TB following the introduction of new National
Guidelines in 2010 and as a result, there has been a drop
of approximately 600 visits for TB screening since 2009.
Infl uenza vaccination also dropped signifi cantly although
many people were already protected from the dominant
‘Flu’ strain as a result of last year’s vaccination programme
• The H1N1 pandemic re-emerged as a problem much later
in 2010 than in 2009 and the combined infl uenza vaccine
of types A (85% of “Flu” cases) made vaccination more
effi cient. Most vaccination was carried out in the OHD
although trained vaccinators carried out vaccinations in
several areas such as E.D./ICU/ORIAN etc and they also
assisted with the “Fit testing” of face masks. This means
that a signifi cant number of frontline staff (over 1000) are
ready for any future outbreaks of other infectious diseases.
OHD held extra clinics again to increase the uptake which
was not as good as the previous year at about half the level.
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