Occupational health and the COVID-19 pandemic: Part 2 professional positives and lessons learnt

摘要

1.Experiencing 'a sense of community/pulling together for a common cause' and 'learning new skills' were the chief 'professional positives' OH professionals could take away from their work during the COVID-19 pandemic. 2.Practitioners working for commercial OH providers were generally less likely than their counterparts working for in-house services to identify 'professional positives' from their work during the pandemic. 3.When asked what lessons the OH professions should learn from the pandemic, the most commonly expressed theme was emergency preparedness/business continuity planning. 4.Other themes were: facilitating remote/home-working systems; ensuring up-to-date information technology; re-evaluating the role of OH; communication; and better planning for PPE supplies and access. 5.Establishing a 'one-stop shop' or central hub to coordinate and distribute OH information and guidance would improve practitioners' ability to respond and advise during any future pandemic or similar crisis. 6.More OH work could be done remotely rather than face to face - health surveillance questionnaires could be more widely used, and mobile phone apps could facilitate remote health monitoring. 7.Other recommendations included: developing OH ethical guidance on managing the special measures associated with a pandemic response; ensuring that OH records were stored digitally and available remotely; and being able to identify individual workers with underlying health conditions. 8.Some respondents called for a national network to redistribute the available OH resource according to need, such as providing additional OH support to local NHS services. 9.The contribution of OH to supporting the workforce in a pandemic has not been fully appreciated by all employers - or by government.