First Aid at Work - Carrying Out a First Aid Needs Assessment

The new First Aid at Work Guidelines for Employers from the Health and Safety Executive are effective from 1st October 2009. You can download the full First Aid at Work guidelines here. The new type of first aid needs assessment will identify what type of first aid training your first aiders will need, how many first aiders you need and where they should be located.

There is no requirement for the assessment of first aid needs to be formal or written down although it may be useful for employers to record the results and employers might need to justify their level of first-aid provision.

How much first-aid provision an employer has to make depends on the circumstances of each workplace.

There are now two levels of workplace first aider making it necessary to carry out this assessment to ensure that you provide the correct type of first aider(s) :

Emergency First Aid at Work (EFAW) - 1 day course
First Aide at Work (FAW) - 3 day course

A first aid needs assessment should consider the following:

the nature of the work and workplace hazards and risks
the size of the organisation
the nature of the workforce
the organisation's history of accidents
the needs of travelling, remote and lone workers
work patterns
the distribution of the workforce
the remoteness of the site from emergency medical services
employees working on shared or multi-occupied sites
annual leave and other absences of first aiders and appointed person
first-aid provision for non-employees

Click here for some example first aid at work case studies.

Suggested numbers of first-aid personel to be available at all times people are at work are given in the HSE First Aid at Work Guidance (The Health and Safety (First Aid) Regulations 1981, Approved Code of Practice and Guidance 2nd Edition 2009.)

03/03/2010

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