Employee Health: Promoting Safety and Well-Being in the Workplace - Research Paper

Introduction

According to the Occupational Safety and Health administration, employee's health needs to be given priority by the employers in any organization. To ensure that employees are safe, various healthcare policies should be incorporated in workplaces to better the work environment. The implementation of health-related policies in the workplace plays an essential role in promoting the overall employee and patient health and safety in the workplace (Wolfenden et al., 2018). The health-related policy that would help in creating a better working environment is drug and substance policy.

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The use of drugs such as alcoholic substances and tobacco smoking makes users drunk and lose their sense of judgment. For example, this may lead to accidents and irresponsible behaviors by the hospital staff, which may also include unethical medical practices that may result in patient deaths. Consistent use of these drugs may as well put users at long-term health risks and life-threatening illnesses such as stroke, cancer, obstructive pulmonary disease, and heart attacks, among others. In that regard, implementing the policy on drug, alcohol, and tobacco use in the Hospital will protect, improve, and sustain the well-being and health of both employees and patients as well.

Impacts of Drug Use by Hospital Employees

As mentioned before, alcohol and drug abuse have several detrimental effects on both employees and the people they handle. First, the use of drugs, tobacco, and alcohol will produce adverse effects on employees and interfere with their efficiency and productivity. In the end, the organization will suffer from overall impaired performance. As employees experience these adverse effects, the impacts will flow down to patients, who shall be subjected to unethical medical practices by drunk physicians (Knight et al., 2016). In the long run, it may lead to life-threatening situations and loss of lives due to compromised actions by employees.

Change Areas

There will be two main change areas in the policy. The first area would be to give strict drug and alcohol outlines to restrain users in the workplace. Declaring and implementing a policy workplace that renders the workplace an alcohol-free zone will help the organization to reduce risk to disease as well as curb unprofessional behavior (Smook et al., 2018). Implementing strict workplace alcohol and tobacco use guidelines will also involve setting specific disciplinary penalties on alcohol and tobacco use and related problems in the workplace. For example, an employee found handling professional duty while under the influence of alcohol shall be dismissed. That will help in instilling discipline among health employees and adopt safe practices to improve patient outcomes. The second area will involve elaborate employee counseling and support programs for perennial users of these drugs. This program will entail teaching workers on the adverse effects of alcohol and drug abuse, advising them on alternative soft drink options, and providing free medication as well.

Fiscal Impact of the Proposed Change

It is imperative to note that setting rules and guidelines alone may not successfully solve problems of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco use in the workplace (Goplerud et al., 2017). Therefore, the implementation of the counseling and support program will come with some financial costs to the organization. This implementation matrix must involve a fiscal budget where the Hospital will have to balance its revenues and expenditures to cater for the support and counseling programs. In that context, the organization will experience reduced profits as part of it will be taken to the implementation of this proposed health policy.

References

Goplerud, E., Hodge, S., & Benham, T. (2017). A substance use cost calculator for US employers with an emphasis on prescription pain medication misuse. Journal of occupational and environmental medicine, 59(11), 1063. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5671784/

Knight, A. P., Sim, M. G., Wilcox, H. M., Cheetham, S., Aalto, M. T., & Liira, H. (2016). Workplace interventions for preventing job loss and other work related outcomes in workers with alcohol misuse. The Cochrane database of systematic reviews, 2016(9). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6457714/

Smook, B., Ubbink, M., Ryke, E., & Strydom, H. (2018). Substance abuse and the workplace: a situation analysis. Social Work, 54(2), 194-209. http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?pid=S0037-80542018000200005&script=sci_arttext&tlng=es

Wolfenden, L., Goldman, S., Stacey, F. G., Grady, A., Kingsland, M., Williams, C. M., ... & Farrell, M. M. (2018). Strategies to improve the implementation of workplacebased policies or practices targeting tobacco, alcohol, diet, physical activity and obesity. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (11). https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD012439.pub2/abstract