Thursday, November 30, 2017

A moron is a moron

I hate these people when you explained them something, they said they understand then keep asking the same question over and over again.
A moron is a moron, they are an idiot!

Quality of a leader/Manager

One thing I hate most in the leader or manager is when there is lack of listening skill, like to reject any idea without examining it.
At least I experienced 2 occasions when I informed them about something, they quickly brush it aside. I feel like a fool, I feel my intelligence is insulted.
Why don't they give opportunity? Sometimes I feel no need to communicate any good ideas or feedback to them since they feel they are smarter than you. Anyway, they are smarter that why they are your leader, but without a nut like you, their leadership or managership is nill.

SHO FT MODULE OH 29 - 30 NOV. 2017

This year NIOSH invited me few times to conduct Occupational Health Module's class for SHO full time and part-time. However, as compared' to previous years, some of my favourite modules like Physical Hazards is given to another lecturer. It is okay, hopefully, the delivery is full of fact and good explanation.
My other observation is the quality of many candidates are below par especially for this type of competence course.
In term of attendances, many of them come late and always disappeared from the class majority of the time. Although, few are a real learner with full of motivation.
Some have lack of confidence and cannot communicate well when asked questions on the topic that has been taught by the previous lecturer.

I believe something needs to be done to keep the standard higher. Just my 2 cents opinion

Tuesday, November 01, 2016

HIRARC, HIRADC, HRA

HIRARC is the term used by DOSH(Department of Safety and Health) to indicate Hazard Identification, Hazard Assessment and Risk Control. 
HIRADC is term used by OHSAS 18001:2007 to indicate Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment and Determine of Control.
HRA is the term used in Industrial Hygiene to indicate Health Risk Assessment — to carry out the same thing as HIRARC and HIRADC.

So What is the different? Are they the same?  The purpose is the same, but the way they carry out Risk Assessment is not similar.

We cannot use simply Generic Format of  HIRARC to  assess Health Hazard like Chemical, Physical and Ergonomics — our assessment will not indicate the real risk.

In assessing the risk of chemical and Physical hazard for example using HRA, we need to assess the Exposure Magnitude, we need to know the Exposure level and compare it with the PEL (Permissible Exposure Limit). That is why CHRA existed, CHRA means Chemical Health Risk Assessment.

In assessing Ergonomics Hazard, we need to find out the Ergonomics Risk Factors, the body Symptom level and other things— which Ergonomist like to call it as EWA (Ergonomic Workplace Assessment).

Sometime I feel, HIRARC is created from the perspective of Safety Hazard Assessment. For Health hazard, we need to do a proper HRA whether we called it CHRA or EWA.

Lastly, HIRARC/HIRADC and HRA are similar but not the same.


HIRARC, INSPECTION AND AUDIT

HAZARD according to OHSAS 18001:2007 (3.6) is a Source, Situation or Act with a potential for Harm in terms of human injury or ill health or a combination of these.
It can be explained by the following simple diagram:

HAZARD---> HUMAN-------> INJURY or/and ILL HEALTH.

Now let's explore further about hazard. From the definition there are 3 things about Hazard namely :
1.SOURCE  2. SITUATION  3. ACT

Hazard as a source can be divided into : Safety, health and Environmental Hazard. It can be classified further into 5 class :

1. Biological Hazard which can do harm by producing Toxin
2. Chemical Hazard which is toxic to the human
3. Ergonomic Hazard which can injure Musculoskeletal system
4. Physical Hazard which can cause harm by body contact
5. Psychosocial Hazard which produce physiological, psychological and behaviour changes.

Hazard as a Situation normally come in the form of Unsafe Condition - any condition which can produce injury or ill health.

Lastly, Hazard as an act normally called Unsafe Act including Reasonably Foreseeable Misused (RFM).

Normally, in hazard identification and risk assessment, we focus on the source of hazard — which can be identified and rating based on the current control measures available. We called this Preventive Measure - to make sure the harm will not occur.

For both Unsafe Condition and Unsafe Act - normally we cannot predict when the human do it because we cannot monitor the human activity all the time. There fore whenever we find these two hazards we need to do Correction immediately and Corrective Measure to make sure it won't recur again.

From the above explanation, we can conclude that Hazard as a source can be identified using HIRARC or HIRADC method, put it into the matrix to label it Risk as High, Medium and Low.

For both Unsafe Act and Unsafe Condition, we need to have a periodical Inspection as well as a feedback or report from the workers whenever they encounter these two type of hazard.

It is useless to do HIRARC without educating the workers about it. Similar too, it is like waiting a time bomb by ignoring the workplace inspection.

Last but not least, we need to carry out AN AUDIT to make sure we have done the right thing and also done the things right.





Sunday, January 10, 2016

RISK ASSESSMENT (HIRARC and HADDON) COURSE

On 19 December 2015 to 20 December 2015, I attended HIRARC and HADDON course organised by Kelab Kebajikan KKP UPM Serdang. I attended this course on self-sponsored because I believe by doing so, the knowledge I gain will be extra valuable.
The 2-days course was conducted by Dr. Mohd Rafee Baharudin, PhD Lecturer at Faculty of Medicine UPM.
The course was very comprehensive, with Dr Rafee explained the core fundamental knowledge in HIRARC. Wrongly in identification of Hazard will make the Risk Assessment misleading, not worthy and unprotectable.
The wrong used of RAM by different industries also will be misleading. In short, although it is up to the organisation to customised the RAM used, but they need to show how they define each elements of the RAM. Using Quantitative RAM without data is a mistake. Saying the result of Qualitative RAM as not significant is also not appropriate because significant is a statistic term. The end result saying that low Risk is insignificant and High Risk is significant, is very misleading if you not understand what is the meaning of SIGNIFICANT.
Explanation how to use RAM Table from NIOSH US and RAM Table used by DOSH in the guideline was highlighted and very informative.
HADDON Matrix, created by Dr W. Haddon is very important to analyse the contributing factors and control measure of injury and disease.
How to do HIRARC Reliability Analysis was also explained.
In short, this course is very important for OSH Practitioners to attend if they want to get skill and correct way to do HIRARC.

Sunday, November 09, 2014

Occupational Health Nurse Course at NIOSH Bintulu

After several calls by NIOSH Bintulu and Miri to teach Occupational Health Nurse(OHN)in the past, at last I accepted the offer to teach a group of OHN from 3 November to 7 November at NIOSH Bintulu. I taught them first module which is mainly related to Occupational Medicine.
7 Nurses attended the course — 5 from Tokoyama Construction, One from Japan Gas Construction and one fro ITAR College Sibu.

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

NESTLE KU WELLNESS DAY

1. Congratulation to Nestle (Sarawak) Kuching for organizing this event for their staff
2. Kuching Specialist Hospital was invited to take part to give health talk and basic health screening like Blood Pressure, BMI and Blood Glucose.
3. Special request given to me to give health talk for 3 separate days in order to allow all their staff to attend.
4. I chose to give health talk on the topic 'Healthy Life Style'. During the talk I provided 3 quizzes to the participants. 
5. The event started from 1 pm to 6 pm
6. The last day for the event is on this coming 25 August 2014.
7. There are few problems I face during the health talk:
7.1 No proper place to put the projector so that the slides are bigger enough for the audience to see
7.2 Very noisy place to give a health talk because the screening place is next to health talk place. Health Talk is attended by 2 batches shift workers — when the other batch has their screening, the next batch attend the health talk.
7.3 I wonder, why  microphone is not provided
8. Hope they improve my points 7.1 to 7.3 in their future event.



This the place where the health talk took place
The participants waiting for their turn to have health screening


Wednesday, June 25, 2014

INSEPS Certificate in SHO, iCATS Kuching

My training to the ICATS INSEPS students started on 23 June and ended today. I was giving Module 3 Occupational Health which cover the following topics:
1. Overview of Occupational Health, Disease and Injury
2. Overview of Occupational Hygiene
3. Occupational Health Standards
4. Fundamental of Industrial Toxicology
5. Biological Monitoring and Health Surveillance
6. Physical hazards
7. Biological Hazards
8. Ergonomics and Ergonomics Risk Factors
9. Shift work
10. Mental Workload
11. Occupational Stress
12. Hazardous Substances
13. Indoor Air Quality
14. Ventilation
25 students attended the course.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

MEDICAL REVIEW OFFICER RECERTIFICATION COURSE

I attended AOEMM resertification course on Medical Review Officer on 14 and 15 June 2014 at Flamingo Hotel KL. About 30 participants attended this  course.

STRESS MANAGEMENT TRAINING 2

I have completed my Stress Management Training from Stress Management Institute UK. My 2 assignments were accepted and both scores DISTINCTION. One of my assignment can be view here, under the list of articles:

My full article can be view here:
An Analyses of the possible causes, development and treatment of a stress-related illness

So, now I am offering my Stress Management Training for those who needs help to overcome their stress. Do not hesitate to call me at 0198570645 if you need my help.