Evaluating Australia's Occupational Health & Safety Policy

This essay provides a comprehensive analysis of the Occupational Health and Safety Policy in Australia, focusing on its impact on nursing practice and the broader healthcare system. It describes the policy's goals, vision, and short- and medium-term targets, highlighting the roles of various stakeholders such as healthcare specialists, service providers, research supporters, and pharmaceutical companies. The essay emphasizes how the policy aims to promote health and safety in the workplace, particularly for nursing staff, and discusses the positive outcomes observed in Australian healthcare due to the policy's implementation, including improved safety, enhanced decision-making, and a reduction in unfair practices. The analysis concludes that the policy has been effective in guiding healthcare professionals and creating a safer working environment, ultimately contributing to the achievement of Australian healthcare goals.

Assessment 2 Essay Weighting

TABLE OF CONTENT
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Health is one of the most important thing in life, people are more conscious about their
health. Government takes great initiative to over come health issue in general public. The
Australian government have developed various policy to improve health of nation, state,
community and an individual (Runciman, Merry and Walton, 2017). In this report health policy
of Australian will be discuses, later description of Occupational health and safety policy of
Australia will going to be provided in this report. This report will later outline vision, short and
medium target of Occupational health and safety policy and later this report will discuss impact
of Occupational health and safety policy on nursing practice. At last this report will we outcome
Occupational health and safety policy of Australia.
MAIN BODY
Description of Occupational health and safety policy in Australia
Occupational health and safety policy of Australian government state that every sector
need to follow these healths and safety policy in their workplace to ensure the safety of the
people especially who work as medical and social working. This policy is being developed by
the government to ensure achievement of healthcare goals and objective and create better society
in Australia. It is very clear that government is undertaking certain step in the betterment of
occupational health of the worker and mainly those who work in nursing and healthcare,
according to the WHS guidelines a workplace need to have all safety measurement in the
workplace.
Goal of this policy is to promote health and safety in the workplace, government of
Australia push business and healthcare sector to increase level of hygiene. This policy has
various goals mainly to promote health safety, apart from this goal, occupational health and
safety policy target those areas where the risk of health is high (Vogenberg and Santilli, 2018).
This policy instruct business and healthcare sector to use hazardous product carefully to prevent
any injury or safety failure in the workplace. It is very important to have occupational health and
safety for nursing staff who perform their job in dangerous health situation where risk of
infection is very high.

Occupational health and safety policy of Australian government highlight that worker
health is one of the most important and crucial for government. Government have taken certain
step to overcome healthcare issue and developed 'Occupational health and safety policy'. This
policy cover every issue that arise in performing healthcare work. According to publisher,
Australia Government Department of Health. Australia is performing well in healthcare sector,
and have being fighting effectively against health issue mainly in occupation and workplace.
This department tend to solve problem in occupation and workplace and manage issue with
developing policy and strategy. Government of Australia developed Occupational health and
safety policy in 2008 but later was improved in 2011 with passing a bill on Occupational health
and safety policy, this policy ensure six important aims such as, protection of nation from health
hazard, responding to health emergencies, improvement in Occupational health and safety,
improvement through expertise, improvement through sharing information and preparing country
for future health challenges.
Vision of Occupational health and safety policy is to create well-being and standard
living for Australian healthcare worker, for now and for future generation. Government have
taken certain steps to stop the spread of health and safety issue in the country, they started with
the aim to target business and healthcare sector. Government highlights that every individual
worker will be covered in Occupational health and safety policy. With the vision of creating a
better society, Australian government now planning to improve Occupational health and safety
policy and tend to cover all important healthcare related policy under one roof. This vision will
help government to focus on wide range of people rather than focusing on one nation, state,
community or individual. The short term vision of Occupational health and safety policy is to
ensure health remain maintain in the state level of business workplace or healthcare. Whereas
long term vision highlight that this policy will cover each and every individual healthcare worker
in Australia including those community which are facing issue in overcoming health issue in the
workplace (Wehde, 2019). In long term target, this policy cover health priorities such as,
Funding System which will provide sufficient funds to Medicare felicity, public health program,
primary health both mental and physical health service, health emergencies and best practice in
the healthcare system and nursing.
Currently the Australian government is planning to promote healthcare through various
program and government campaign, they tend to deliver sustainable environment in the

betterment of the society. Undertaking Occupational health and safety policy government have
taken certain legislation rules to improve health of worker.
Impact of the occupational health and safety policy over the nursing & health care system in
Australia
The major stakeholders of the occupational health and safety policy are the health care
specialist, service providers, research supporters, pharmaceutical international bodies and
government. The stakeholders refer to those persons that are the part of policy. And all of these
stakeholders have their own role and responsibilities. It is important that every stakeholder has to
play their role in effective manner. This ensures the efficient implementation of the policy
(Wing, Simon & Bello-Gomez, (2018). The occupational health and safety policy is one of the
national policy that has impacted the nursing and healthcare in positive manner in Australia.
There are different priorities and roles of the stakeholders. The role of the healthcare specialist is
to ensure the safe practices for the healthcare workers. This policy is mainly for the service
provider. The safe working environment has to be given to the nurses in accordance of this
policy. The research supporters are the base of forming the policy. And they have been
considered as one of the key stakeholder for forming the policies.
The major role of the researchers is to make an effective research on the current situation
of health in the community and healthcare and on the basis of that the goals in the policy has
been formed. And after the formation of goals, there research doest not stop. They consistently
monitor the healthcare in order to know the results of the policy (Naghavi & et.al. (2020). The
data that has been gathered from the research techniques helps in knowing the major impact of
the policy under the healthcare and on the nurses. It has been found from various studies that, the
occupational health and safety policy has been proven effective enough in terms of providing an
extreme support to the nursing for increasing the effectiveness of the working. The
pharmaceutical industry plays the vital role in this policy. As these industries are responsible for
developing, creating and delivering the stock of medicines that are needed for bettering the
health of the public. They ensure the efficient and safe delivery of medicines in the healthcare.
So, the prevention can be done in the safe manner (Campbell, (2017).
The international bodies refer to the World health organization. This is the administration
from where all the policies has been made and get the license. The role of WHO is to monitor the
implementation of policy. The government keeps the keen focus over the activities of the health

care. Any illegal action in relation of the healthcare workers leads to high penalty. The
government is accountable for punishing and taking actions. The health policies helps in making
clear vision and setting target for the healthcare. This policy of WHO determines the clear vision
to the healthcare in term of focusing on the service providers. The healthcare workers such as
nurses, they make efforts in preventing and taking care of clients. Therefore, it is important to
create that environment which ensures the safety of the nurses. As their safety ensures the safety
of the clients. The policy has impacted the nursing practices in positive manner. The nursing
practices refers to those practices that ensures the effective treatment to the clients. Occupational
health and safety policy is a bigger concept that involves al the aspect of nursing practices. The
nurses experience the sense of safety. As a result, they make effective contribution in their
performance (Masood, Kothari, & Regan, (2020). This policy enables the health care in taking
important decisions.
The nurses engaged with the other service providers and acts as the support system in
developing the programmes related to the healthcare. The prevention of the healthcare workers
from the workplace hazard has become the part of nursing practices. Nurses are guided towards
experiencing the better practices that ensures their safety. It has been found from various
research that, in Australia the nursing practices has been done in effective manner as the proper
guidance has been given to the nurses in terms of treating the clients. The nurses are guided to
towards adopting the positive behaviour and the sense of safe workplace creates the aspect of
positivity in them. The positive behaviour is one of the approach that has been adopted by the
health care in order to develop the effective understanding between service user and service
provider.
The outcomes of the occupational health and safety policy has been proven effective
enough over the Australian health care. This policy has decreased the fear of illegal practices at
the workplace. Certain programmes has been launched under this policy under which free
guidance has been provided to the nurses. The sense of safety in the healthcare workers results in
boosting them to perform in effective manner in providing the services. The government made
strict rules in relation of the unfair practices with the service providers at the workplace in
healthcare (Fafard & Hoffman, (2020). Fair practices have been ensured in the health care. As a
result, this policy has been proven highly effective enough for achieving the goals of the
Australian healthcare.

CONCLUSION
From the above report it has been concluded that the occupational health and safety
policy of WHO has been proven extreme effective for the Australian healthcare services. This
policy has guided the healthcare in terms of making clear vision for achieving the goals. The
government has made the certain rules and regulation in the context of this policy. And these
rules has been proven highly efficient in relation of guiding the healthcare professionals for
creating the safe working environment (Rutter and et.al. (2017). Along with this, the report
describe the different stakeholders of the policy. There are different roles has been performed by
the different stakeholders. Apart from this, the report highlighted the ways in which the policy
has impacted the nursing practices. The policy has showed the positive outcome.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
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biology. 3(1). 124.
Fafard, P., & Hoffman, S. J. (2020). Rethinking knowledge translation for public health
policy. Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and Practice. 16(1). 165-175.
Masood, S., Kothari, A., & Regan, S. (2020). The use of research in public health policy: a
systematic review. Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate and
Practice. 16(1). 7-43.
Naghavi & et.al. (2020). Improving the quality of cause of death data for public health policy:
are all ‘garbage’codes equally problematic?. BMC medicine. 18(1). 1-3.
Runciman, B., Merry, A. and Walton, M., 2017. Safety and ethics in healthcare: a guide to
getting it right. CRC Press.
Rutter and et.al. (2017). The need for a complex systems model of evidence for public
health. The lancet. 390(10112). 2602-2604.
Vogenberg, F.R. and Santilli, J., 2018. Healthcare trends for 2018. American health & drug
benefits, 11(1), p.48.
Wehde, M., 2019. Healthcare 4.0. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 47(3), pp.24-28.
Wing, C., Simon, K., & Bello-Gomez, R. A. (2018). Designing difference in difference studies:
best practices for public health policy research. Annual review of public health. 39.
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