HEALTH TALK AT PMB, JKR Kuching

Today (15 December,2009) I was invited by SHECOM of Pusat Makmal Bahan-Bahan (PMB), JKR at Tabuan Jaya Kuching to give a talk on Stress Management at 9:30 a.m.

My talk was entitled Occupational & Psychological Stress. My presentation is divided into two part : 1) Understand Stress 2) Basic Management of Stress.

I focused on 2 components of stress situation which is vital to understand in order to manage STRESS effectively. First component is the STRESSOR or source of stress. The first step in stress management is to identify the STRESSOR and decide whether it can be eliminate, modify or cannot at all. If the source can be eliminated and modified, it will make it easy to manage the stress. In some situation, the source cannot be changed at all for example loss event (death).So we have to be rational to accept it as a FACT in life. In this case, the strategy is to concentrate on the way you cope (response) with the situation. The approach will be individual and organizational.

Although the talk has a small crowd but during Q&A session, there were a lot of questions asked by the participants.

HEALTH TALK AT BROOKE DOCKYARD

On the 8 December, 2009 I have a privilege to give a health talk on occupational hazard to the workers of Brooke DockYard, Kuching. The topic of my health talk is on Noise at workplace. Around 20 workers were attending the talk. Few questions were asked by the participants.

SEMINAR ON GLOBAL STRATEGY ON OSH

Today I presented a paper on Total Health Promotion: Smoking Issue at workplace at the seminar on Global Strategy On OSH, organised by NIOSH SARAWAK. About 70 participants, majority are SHO, attended this seminar at Merdeka Palace Hotel Kuching. In my presentation, I explained why smoking at workplace matters and how Total Health Promotion can be used to tackle the issue of smoking at workplace. Anybody want a copy of my presentation, kindly email me at dr_ainimurni@kcsh.kpjhealth.com.my. The file is in pdf format with 3.3 MB size.

Quit Smoking Talk

On 26 April, I was invited by Pengangkutan Mekar Tiasa (PMT), one of SHELL Timur Sdn Bhd's haulier to give a talk to their HGV drivers.

I gave an hour health talk on Tobacco Addiction.

My talk covered the following topics:

1. Who and Why people smoke?

According to National Health & Mortality Survey 3 (NHMS3 2006), it is estimated about 3 million smokers in Malaysia in 2007. 1 in 2 males population is smokers. At workplace, (study by Giovino GA: NIOSH US Scientific Workshop on Work, Smoking & Health, 2000) showed that more smokers amongst blue collar and service workers as compare to white collar. Blue collar are usually a heavier smoker and less likely to quit.

2. The dangers of smoking

Cigarette contains 4000 chemicals of which 43 are confirmed carcinogenic including benzene. All these chemicals except one causing health problem. The one that has short term pleasure BUT causing addiction to smoker is nicotine. Nicotine increases the production of dopamine in the brain which cause a feeling of calmness and peaceful. But the problem is this effect is only short term and smoker keeps taking another cigarette (craving) after the effect decreases. Nicotine also causes withdrawal symptoms. Craving and withdrawal symptoms are the two problems that cause majority of smokers fail to quit.

Smoking also costly to safety and workplace productivity. Ill health and damage to property and life as well as decrease productivity due to smoking cause leakage of money to the employer/s income.

3. How to Quit Smoking?

Quit smoking is a long process and it cannot be done overnight although few people claimed they quit by so called 'cold turkey' method. Pharmacotherapy and Behaviour Counselling need to be used to help heavy smoker who are addictive with Fagerstrom Score > 4 or smoking > 10 sticks per day, to quit.

HEALTH Talk at ASSAR Senari Group (ASG)

Today, ASSAR Senari Group(ASG) Sarawak, the owner of Independence Oil Termional(IOT) invited me to give a health talk on 'Chemical Hazards' in conjunction with their HSSE Week. About 20 audiences attended the talk.

In my presentation, I started by informing the audience that everyday, thousand of chemicals are used in our workplace, home and environment. Chemical hazards is common hazards found at workplace and every worker is exposed to it. I stressed that we have no choice except to continue the battle proactively to protect our health from the effect of hazardous chemicals.

To help the audience in understanding the chemical hazards, I divided my health talk in three(3) short chapters :

Chapter One : Understanding chemical hazards: Hazardous chemicals and how it enters and effects our body

Chapter Two: Understanding the Malaysian Law pertaining to Chemical hazards

Chapter Three: Control the chemical hazards in workplace

In summary, I told the audience the following most important steps in fighting chemical hazards:

1. Awareness and Knowledgeable on chemicals used in workplace : read the Material safety Data Sheet (MSDS)

2. Practice Personal Hygiene

3. Perform Industrial Hygiene requirement as mentioned in OSHA 1994 and FMA 1967

4. Go for health and medical surveillance regularly or annually

Health Talk on Ergonomics at Proton Edar Sdn Bhd

On 21st February 2009, Proton Edar Sdn Bhd Kuching Office, invited me to give a talk on Ergonomics in colloboration of their Health,Safety and Environment(HSE) Week. Around 100 employees attended the talk. I chose 'Ergonomics & Productivity' as the title of my talk. In Act 1(introduction) of my talk, I stressed that in global economic competition, maintaining and maximising productivity is a must for the survival of any organisation. Workers as the primary tool of business play an important role in organisation's productivity. However, in many organisations, workers' health and safety is always under threat in the effort to achieve maximum productivity. Productivity can only be maintained and maximised by protecting the health and safety of the workers. To achieve this, all organisations must implement ergonomics program or approach in their workplace in order to maintain and maximise their productivity. Ergonomics approach means fitting the work environments and the job to the workers capability.

SHELL KUCHING SAFETY WEEK

SHELL TIMUR Sdn Bhd  launched their HSSE Week from 21 -24 October 2008. I was invited by PMT, one of Shell's haulier to give a health talk on Stress Management. I delivered my health talk for one hour from 4 pm to 5 pm on 21 Oct, 2008 at SHELL Kuching's Canteen.

Here is the outline of my health talk :

1. Understanding what is stress? In this section, I discussed the definition of stress. Like beauty, stress is in the eye of the beholder. Basically, it occurs in situation where our life's demand exceeds our capability. The most important things in understanding stress is to know the two components model of stress. The two components are the stressor - the situation which cause the stress and our response - how we response to the stressor. To understand more, I presented the biochemical and physiological changes in our body during the stress process.

2. What causes stress?  There are a lot of things that can cause stress. In the nutshell, it can be divided into recent event and on-going event: both can be in a form of threat or loss. These two events can occur at the workplace or outside the workplace. So, we can classify stress into occupational stress which happens because of factors at workplace and non-occupational stress, because of factors in our life. However, these classification is to simplify our understand but in reality stress does not have boundary, it affect us both at work and out of work. Other important things to know is the 3 Ps factors viz.  predisposing, precipitating and perpetuating factors, which we need to identify in order to manage the stress effectively.

3. Basic Stress management? Effective management of stress must using the holistic approach. Holistic domains of life (physical,social,psychologicall and spiritual)  need to be revisited by identifying the shortage in each domain. This shortage could be the 3 Ps factors which need to be addressed. The 2 components of stress also needs to be explored. Then the stress management can be constructed by using individual and/or workplace approach.

HEALTH TALK SERIES AT IOT MANAGEMENT

On 20 October, 2008, I delivered my first health talk to staff of IOT Management , an Independent Oil Terminal located at Senari, owned by ASSAR SARAWAK.

This is one of the series of Health Talk as part of my service as Occupational Health Doctor and Advisor (OHDA) to IOT Management. The first topic I gave is on HEALTH HAZARDS AT WORKPLACE. Around 15 employees attended the talk at their conference room at 10 am to 12 noon.

In the afternoon, I attended IOT Management HSSE Meeting.

Occupational Skin Diseases

I gave a health talk on Occupational Skin Diseases to 22 employees of Brooke Dockyard on 23 September, 2008. My talk touched mainly on Occupational Contact Dermatitis which contributes 60% of work-related dermatoses. I emphasized on the importance of  preventive and control measures of work-related illness particularly occupational skin diseases. Congratulations to Brooke Dockyard especially Mr. Andrew Ronggie, the HSSE Manager and SN Valerie, Nurse in-charge of Occupational Health Services of Brooke Dockyard for organising the talk. 

PUBLIC HEALTH OUTREACH AT KG PENGKALAN KUAP

On last Saturday, 18 August, 2007 Kuching Specialist Hospital organised an outreach public health screening program at Kg Pengkalan Kuap Samarahan from 2 pm to 5 pm. I gave a health talk on Hypertension for about 20 minutes followed by Q&A sessions. A lot of questions asked by the audience regarding their health problem.
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Health Talk to SHELL Driver

This morning, I gave a health talk on "The Management of Fatigue" to SHELL drivers employed by Pengangkutan Mekar Tiasa (PMT) at Pending. An hour talk was planned 2 month ago by the Human Resource Unit of PMT. Around 15 people mainly drivers attended the talk. I have covered 6 scopes of fatigue in this talk:
1. What is fatigue and its spectrum?
2. How common is fatigue?
3. What is the cause of fatigue?
4. What is the effect of fatigue?
5. Who is at risk?
6. What is the treatment?
I am very happy with the response from the drivers; 6 of them participated actively in asking questions.
I have reminded them, fatigue can affect their performance as the driver. Study showed that Working for more than 20 hours is equivalent to the effect of Blood Alcohol Level of 0.1g/100cc. This is above the legal alcohol allowed by the law which is less than 0.08g/100cc.

OSH News

My Activities...........
On Wednesday, 14th June, 2006, I gave health talk to SHELL TIMUR SDN BHD, Kuching as one of the activities of their Health, Safety & Environmental(HSE) week from 12 - 16th June, 2006. I was invited to give health talk on two topics :- 1. Stress Management 2. Basic Egonomics. I will post the pdf version of my slides and will give you the link to download it in my next posting.
On 17th June, 2006 I attended a preview talk on NIOSH's new education program called Executive Diploma in Ocupational Safety and Health ( EDOSH ). The preview was given by NIOSH Bintulu Executive Manager, Ir. Daud Sulaiman at their new Office at Jalan Petanak, opposite the Petanak Central Market, Kuching, Sarawak.