My Working Day: Caitriona O Donovan, manager of Health at Work, Bupa Ireland, provides a range of health services to companies
I am responsible for managing the Health at Work services at Bupa Ireland. We provide services to companies to ensure they minimise health risks to employees, including on-site occupational health services.
I'm involved in the interaction with both the client and the person who provides those services to each company. One of our larger clients is AOL Technologies which has a very proactive and preventative philosophy towards occupational health.
Part of my role is placing occupational health advisers to deliver that service. They are full time, on-site and carry out services to help our clients comply with legislation, from pre-employment health questionnaires to ergonomic training.
A typical day would involve going to the client's workplace and carrying out a review, which we do on a quarterly basis. We see if we have achieved our objectives for the previous quarter and make plans for the following quarter, such as carrying out a health promotion campaign. Recently, AOL offered comprehensive health assessments to all of its employees, including blood tests, lung function tests and electrocardiograms, and we were responsible for carrying those out.
The services we deliver are quite broad. Our first interaction with an employee is before they commence employment, when we carry out a pre-employment assessment of the potential employee. This is to ensure they are fit to do the job. For example, someone with a musculo-skeletal problem, such as repetitive strain injury, can't be in a role where they are typing for 10 hours a day.
We often come across conditions that have gone undetected, such as raised blood pressure or high cholesterol. We get in there before the problem worsens, as these conditions are often symptomless.
We also do vision screening on those working at computer monitors.
Most of our clients are in a non-manual work environment, where they sit at a desk for eight or 10 hours each day. The most common conditions related to this tend to be musculo-skeletal, such as repetitive strain injuries or work-related upper limb disorder, but stress can often be an issue too.
We do stress management training, where we teach people that stress is a normal part of life. We also show them simple coping techniques or suggest lifestyle changes. It is the main cause of absence in many organisations so it needs to be tackled.
Anything that's health related in the workplace is our business. Occupational health is very variable - the needs of one organisation differ greatly to those of another. We provide so many different services in so many ways, so every day is different.
(In conversation with Danielle Barron)