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AOMS Medical Services
Pre-placement Medical Examinations:
Pre-placement medical examinations should be carried out, not only on all new hires, but also in the case of job transfer or
significant job change during the term of employment. Such assessments will establish a baseline in employee
health and in doing so, will identify previous health hazard exposures which will accommodate institution of
baseline biological screening as per job description. This will also tend to identify specific groups
associated with specific health hazard exposure and lead to the development of proper health surveillance
programs for target groups of employees. These examinations will also determine fitness for job description,
both for the performance of the job task as will as the safety of job task performance with regard to either
personal injury or injury to co-workers.
These pre-placement assessments are standardized and the concept and examination methods will be presented in
advance to management, employees and to labour representatives for ratification. The examining physician must
be fully aware of the job description and of the anticipated health hazard exposures on the job. The examining
physician must inform the employee of all findings of the examination and must initiate and ensure any further
medical follow-up that is indicated as a result of the assessment with appropriate referral documentation,
etc.
On completion of the assessment, standardized fitness classification forms are issued to be reviewed and
cosigned for release by the applicant and then given to the applicant to bring to the appropriate human
resources personnel. In this way, the principles of medical confidentiality are strictly upheld.
Periodic Medical Examinations/Health Surveillance Programs
It has been customary in the past, and until recently, to have standard protocol for the performance
of periodic physician medical examinations. Today, health surveillance programs have, to a large degree,
replaced this both on a cost effective and more productive basis. Results of initial biological screening,
together with results of environmental monitoring as carried out by industrial hygiene, should dictate which
groups of employees will require ongoing or periodic biological screening to monitor health hazard exposure
effects. Periodic job specific health questionnaires and/or occupational RN evaluations are the more cost
effective approach in this regard. AOMS physicians will be available to review these on the client's behalf.
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