Security for Staff
As an NHS organisation we are obliged to protect our employees and provide an environment that is safe and secure. Some members of staff will at times be required to work on their own or away from their base location to undertake part of their duties. In such circumstances, there may be an increased risk exposure to situations involving violence, verbal abuse, threatening behaviour, or accidents.
The NHS SMS1 defines lone working as: ‘Any situation or location in which someone works without a colleague nearby, or when someone is working out of sight or earshot of another colleague.’
Lone workers need additional organisational support, management and training to deal with the specific risks they face. They must also be empowered to take a greater degree of responsibility for their own safety and security.
Following a commitment to lone worker safety made by the Health Secretary, the Department of Health announced in May 2009 that 30,000 NHS lone workers would receive personal security devices.
NHS Oxfordshire has introduced Personal Safety devices for use of staff identified to be most at risk working routinely in the evening and at weekends in accordance with our Personal Safety and Lone Working policy definitions.
As well as discreetly raising an alert if they feel their safety is threatened, staff can use the device to register their whereabouts and any perceived risks before they enter the lone working situation, and to monitor and record any incidents that occur, ensuring an immediate response from emergency services.
Whilst lone worker devices will not prevent incidents and will not make people invincible, if used alongside good procedures, they will enhance the protection of vulnerable lone workers.
Incidents involving violence, verbal abuse, threatening behaviour or accidents may have potentially damaging effects on individual staff members and the organisation as a whole. As such, a number of organisation wide policies are in place including a Personal Safety and Lone Working policy which was reviewed and updated in 2009 in response to the NHS ‘Not Alone’ Guidance.
It is our intention to implement and maintain, so far as is reasonably practicable, such preventative measures as are necessary to combat the risks to personal safety faced by staff, including those working alone or away from their base location.