Several health hazards in most workplaces can pose an active threat to workers’ health. Therefore, a responsible employer must ensure a safe workplace environment for employees.
Despite the multiple ways employers can protect workers’ health, one of the best approaches is to engage a qualified chief medical advisor.
If you’re contemplating hiring a medical advisor for your organisation, you may need some justifications. Read on as we explore who medical advisors are and what they do.
Who Is a Chief Medical Advisor?
A health advisor is an expert whose main task is ensuring safety in the workplace. These professionals are responsible for formulating health policies and plans for professional establishments to guarantee workers’ welfare.
A chief medical advisor can work for different companies and establishments, ranging from small firms to heavy industries. However, it’s no doubt that these services are more relevant in large enterprises that work with plenty of heavy machines, as they’re more prone to hazards.
Why Hire a Chief Medical Advisor?
As mentioned earlier, medical advisors help increase productivity in your workspace by ensuring that the workers are safe and healthy. The following section will expound on some types of services a typical medical advisor offers and importance to your company.
What Does a Chief Medical Advisor Do?
Due to the demands of different sectors of an establishment, medical advisors are often knowledgeable in virtually all aspects of factory healthcare. They have an extensive array of tasks, from health assessments to workplace telemedicine or on-site health aids.
Here are some of the services that a medical advisor can offer, making them an indispensable part of a workplace.
- Employee Health Assessment
One of the most important jobs of a medical advisor is to provide quality and regular health assessments to the workers in a particular establishment. This aspect of their job implies that they’re responsible for performing periodic medical examinations on the workers.
These medical examinations are necessary to ensure that each employee is healthy enough to work safely in the workplace environment. The health assessments may include health surveillance, drug and alcohol testing, wellness assessment, and fitness tests to help determine employees’ fitness for duty.
- Telemedicine
Technology has immensely helped health practitioners when it comes to responding to emergencies. Lately, medical advisors can work remotely with patients from a distant geographical location, thanks to the rapid progression of technology.
Workplaces can quickly access top-notch medical review services, injury classification services, and medical management consultations, all with the help of cutting-edge telemedical devices.
- Occupational Hygiene and Preventive Health Services
Prevention is better than cure; it’s better to implement safety measures than to seek solutions after the problem. The only way to prevent accidents in the workplace is to observe occupational hygiene and get quality preventive health services.
A medical advisor will measure the risks of exposure to dangerous particles in your workspace and work collaboratively with you to provide solutions to them.
- On-Site Medical Assessment Services
A good advisor should be able to provide on-site medical assessments for your workers. An example is observing dangerous goods medical to ensure that your workers are free from the impacts of hazardous goods. Dangerous goods refer to flammable substances or particles and pose a serious threat to environmental safety.
Health advisors can provide on-site health surveillance, health assessment, occupational hygiene, Audiometry, and other forms of on-site training.
While medical advisors help reduce injuries and hazards in the workplace, it’s essential also to try alternate methods to ensure employee safety. The following section will explore some ideas you can implement after hiring a medic.
How to Promote Safety in the Workplace?
It’s essential to note that chief health advisors are still humans and incapable of proactively preventing every incident. Instead of relying on them exclusively, you can teach some safety tips in your workplace to protect your employees.
Here are some ways to promote safety in the workplace after hiring a medical advisor:
- Good Safety Training for Employees
An excellent way to start promoting workplace safety is by ensuring everyone has basic knowledge of workplace safety, at the very least. Health experts should teach them the safest ways to handle machinery and introduce them to first aid responses to emergencies.
You can consider creating a scheme that rewards standouts in the safety training. This move will encourage other workers to take workplace safety seriously and promote a safe working environment.
- Workplace Hygiene
Besides increasing safety, a clean working environment will also improve productivity. It’s entirely up to the employers to ensure that the domain is kept clean and workers know how to maintain a tidy space.
The safety training should also incorporate workplace hygiene basics to help employees learn how they can keep the facility clean.
- Use the Best Tools and Equipment for Work
This section doesn’t need an extensive explanation if we are to consider the fact that one of the most notorious causes of workplace hazards is machine malfunctions. Most of those accidents could’ve been prevented if the tools were of sound quality, necessitating the provision of top-notch equipment for work.
- Make Frequent Background Checks
While it sounds harmless to trust all employees to ensure a safe environment, many workplace hazards are still a result of workers’ negligence. Even after mandating safe practices and offering training, it’s still essential to make background checks on safety before employment.
Before hiring a potential employee, you want to confirm from previous employers that they don’t make decisions that put them and other people at risk. It becomes even more necessary when hiring for a high-risk workplace like a construction site or a manufacturing factor.
- Put Up Useful Safety Signs and Labels
Signs and labels are an underrated but highly effective way to minimize hazards in the workspace. These signs use pictures to communicate critical safety information to your workers. They could be anything from a simple “STOP” sign to instructions that remind workers to turn off machines.
Conclusion
Whether helping workers formulate a solid alcohol management plan or indulging in regular health assessments, health advisors always have a place in any company with high injury risk.
While smaller companies may get by without an in-house chief medical advisor, more giant factories that work with heavy machines certainly need one. If you’re discouraged by the monetary costs of hiring one, consider the productivity gains, an advantage that makes the decision a no-brainer.
