Health & Safety gone mad
There is a much welcome trend towards a common sense approach by the Government towards simplifying health and safety law but it may take some time for big organizations to start adapting to this and relaxing what has become an overly cautious, knee jerk and bureaucratic approach.
It should never be forgotten that tragic situations arise from failure to deal appropriately with health and safety but such tragedies can also occur, it seems, from an approach based on rules and bureaucracy. This tends to happen when staff in the NHS are unable to assist patients in dire need of urgent help due to health and safety reasons. This is highlighted by the following case.
In January 2011, 14-year-old Shannon Powell collapsed on a cross country race course. She had suffered a violent fit. Due to health and safety reasons, including that one paramedic was concerned she might put her back out lifting the patient it took paramedics an hour to reach the young girl because conditions were muddy and tragically, Shannon died. The coroner found that the death may well have been averted if the paramedics had got to the girl earlier and that the reason why they hadn’t was health and safety related.
In a recent survey of 1,000 members of the College of Paramedics over 70% said that they had experienced situations where they could not operate as they otherwise would due to health-and-safety regulations imposed by managers.
We realise this is a difficult balancing act, particularly in big business where the obligations will be more strictly applied, with the possibility of personal injury or other claims by staff, but the above story highlights that in some sectors and jobs, there are instances where the risk of inaction is as bad if not worse than the risk of action.
