NHS Occupational Health Services need to have a model and team structure that suits the needs of their locality and meets the challenges that geography imposes on accessibility.

We also need to ensure that any model we adopt adheres to key principles:

  • Strong and demonstrable focus on a high quality, clinically-led and evidence-based service
  • An equitable and accessible service
  • Impartial, approachable and receptive 
  • Contribute to improved organisational productivity
  • Work in partnership with all healthcare services and within the community
  • Underpinned by innovation
  • Offer diversity and depth of specialisation and training opportunities

In designing our service, we also need to make sure that our staff resources are deployed efficiently using the skills of the whole team effectively. This means having occupational health services that are large enough to ensure that the full range of expertise is available and that tasks are undertaken by staff who are competent to perform them. Expensive, highly trained and experienced staff should not undertake tasks that more junior members of the team can do.

Below Network members share some of the team structures that have been adopted to try and meet the needs in their health communities:

Example OH Team Structure 1

This structure supports a large acute Trust of circa 11,500 staff located on two main sites + some external contract work.

Example OH Team Structure 2

This structure supports around 25000 NHS staff and 10,000 non-NHS staff from NHS Trust Partners, other NHS and non-NHS organisations over a large geographical area.