• Self care for staff during COVID-19

• Staff support during COVID-19

• Workstation exercises, which includes recommendations to reduce aches and pains

• COVID-19 and psychological staff support -for managers and leaders

• Tips for relieving stress

• Tips for a positive remote working experience

• Healthy virtual meetings

• Vitamin D leaflet

We ask all managers to have conversations with colleagues in your team to ensure that they are well supported, whether they are working in an office, ward or working from home.

Have regular conversations and discussions with your colleagues and pick up any health risk assessment amendments.

It’s so important that we support everyone’s physical and emotional wellbeing.

We know many are regularly having health and wellbeing conversations through 1:1s, clinical supervision and coaching

The NHS People Plan asks that line managers offer all our NHS people a health and wellbeing conversation, and provide the opportunity to develop a personalised wellbeing plan, from September 2020.

You can find a wellbeing action plan for you to fill in and go through with your manager.
 

We are now asking all staff to undertake a health risk assessment.  This includes all new starters and all colleagues who previously declined the opportunity to undertake an assessment last year – including people who have no underlying health conditions to report.

There is a Manager Guide to completing the health risk assessment. 

• If you haven’t had a health risk assessment or have recently started to work for the Trust, please discuss this with your manager and arrange a time to have this important conversation.  You will need to bring details of any medication you take to support any health conditions and some extra information such as your BMI given this is a key risk factor for COVID.  Please be assured that all of this information will stay wholly confidential.
• If you have already had a health risk assessment, please revisit it to answer the new questions and check the rest of the information remains up to date. More details on revisiting the assessment can be found below.

How to access the health risk assessment

The updated health risk assessment can be accessed via the 'quick links to systems' page on Focus. Look for the link 'COVID-19 health risk assessment form'.

Alternatively you can click here for a direct link to the health risk assessment form. 

You will need to be logged in to the Trust network or remote access service to access the form.

Once the form has been submitted 

Once you have completed the health risk assessment form, you will receive advice from Occupational Health by letter or email. 

If you are waiting for an update from Occupational Health, please check for any missed calls and voicemails from the team as the Occupational Health nurse may wish to speak to you. If you need to return a call but are unsure of the best number to use, please use the main Occupational Health landline number – 01332 254747 – or email the team at uhdb.occhealth@nhs.net.

Any recommendations from Occupational Health then need to be reviewed and so you need to schedule a follow-up meeting with your manager. 

You should have been sent your report directly from Occupational Health. Please forward your report and the accompanying password to your manager so they can read it and prepare. If you prefer, the report can be downloaded and forwarded as an attachment. If you have mislaid the report, please email uhdb.occhealth@nhs.net with your name and date of birth for identification purposes and the report will be sent to you.

If you would like the report to be sent to your manager as well, please copy your manager’s email into your email request at uhdb.occhealth@nhs.net and confirm that you would like the report to be sent to both yourself and your manager (copied in). 

The information from Occupational Health, and your discussions with your manager, must be recorded on the health risk assessment form.  

So please liaise with your line manager to book a meeting, and then together you can review the advice from Occupational Health and record the findings, recommendations and jointly-developed plan on how you will work in this next phase of the pandemic.

Updating the risk assessment form with the recommendations and plan

Everyone who submits a health risk assessment form receives an email from the mailbox dhcft.applications@nhs.net to confirm that the form has been submitted. This email contains a link for you to access your assessment. Click on this link to go back in and add your feedback and plan.

When you access your form, there will be a choice of three outcomes:

• Green – return to work with a risk reduction plan and any necessary adaptations
• Amber – work from home for a further four weeks, with socially distanced visits to the workplace, and then review
• Red – this reflects a colleague who is on the shielded list; the national guidance is that colleagues in the shielded group can begin to return to work from August.  

Once you have selected one of the outcomes outlined above, three new fields will then appear, allowing you to include one or more of the following:

• A return-to-work date
• A person-specific plan
• A list of specific equipment requirements.

These fields need to be filled in; this information is vital to help us plan for the next phase, both in terms of equipment and understanding where and when you will be working safely in our Trust and what support you need. The ‘submit manager assessment’ button should be clicked to save the information. 

View a visual aid illustrating the process of updating the form.

Revisiting health risk assessments

Please make sure you are revisiting your health risk assessment and refreshing it if there is any new information that needs to be included. 

Also, if you have previously undertaken a health risk assessment but it needs to be updated, please revisit this as it is important the document remains live and up-to-date.  This process is in line with our duties as an employer to look after the health and safety of all out staff.

The health risk assessment process was also discussed at a Team Brief session for managers. Any managers who were unable to attend can view a recording of this session.