DSE Risk Assessment Not Just For Offices
Nursing was a profession I strived towards since childhood. Back then, my favourite game was hospitals where I would line up all my dolls in their makeshift beds and bandage them up beyond recognition.
Working my way through school, I couldn’t wait to get to nursing college. I became a volunteer member of St Johns Ambulance, did a life saving course at the local swimming pool and finally got my place in local college.
This is the same college that my mum went to. But she tells me things have changed. A lot of the training is hands on, of course, but as before, it is accompanied with mounting amounts of paperwork. Hours spent plugging away at a desk had left some of the trainees with repetitive strain injuries and back problems so the college called in a company to carry out a DSE risk assessment.
Display screen equipment has often been the cause of many ailments that we have seen pass through the college. Joint problems, particularly of the arm of hand and back or neck complaints are often associated with display screen equipment being wrongly positioned for a long period of time. We now recommend to patients that they ensure they or their company get a DSE risk assessment carried out to prevent further cases of these injuries occurring.
Well, I made it through my training to become a basic nurse. I’ve been given a placement on the local children’s ward of the general hospital and have settled in well. My aim is to continue my training and eventually become a midwife but, like everybody else, I have to earn a living while I do it and nurse’s wages aren’t exactly high at the moment.
I enjoy my job. It is so rewarding to see the children get better and be able to leave although we do miss a lot of them - they have such lovely characters. Of course the downside is that we have to deal with the dreaded paperwork. Space is limited on this ward so us nurses share a workstation and take it in turns to carry out our paperwork there.
The DSE risk assessment people have been to our department in the past, I am told. It was a health and safety requirement of the nurses union to protect against unnecessary health complaints and ensure we were able to do our jobs to the best of our abilities. The only problem is, when the DSE risk assessment was carried out, they only knew of one nurse using the equipment.
Now there are three of us using it and we’re all different sizes and weights and it seems the computer screen and chair are never quite at the right angle to suit any of us. I know of one nurse who was off sick for a week with a finger that got trapped in a chair mechanism when she was trying to adjust it!
A union meeting has been called after this event to discuss the situation with the pen pushers who decide on where the budget goes. These are the people we have to get past if we want the right facilities. But we have a secret ploy. We have already brought in a DSE risk assessment expert of our own who has assessed the situation and has a report to hand.
The meeting is a success for the nurses. With the help of our DSE risk assessment expert we have won the basic right to a desk each!
Health expert Catherine Harvey looks at the need for DSE risk assessment in hospitals. To find out more please visit http://www.complywise.co.uk/
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