James Walker from WA Country Health Service (WACHS) was the winner of the Health and Safety Representative of the Year award at the WHS Excellence Awards 2024.
James, a clinical nurse, was nominated for his outstanding commitment to the role of HSR at Warren Hospital, Manjimup.
Nursing in rural hospitals is very challenging with high exposure to workplace violence and aggression risks, as well as manual tasks risks related to patient care. It can be a stressful work environment due to the physical and cognitive demands of the nursing role, as well as staffing pressures that come with smaller rural and remote hospitals.
James looks for ways to improve his colleagues’ physical and psychosocial safety. The initiatives driven by James have been over and above the regular HSR role of assisting with incident investigation, participating in WHS committees and undertaking workplace hazard inspections. James delves deeper into the “why” of hazards and incidents and follows up on reported incidents to ensure that actions taken are high level and effective at addressing the risk.
He applied this thinking to several initiatives with the aim of making the workplace safer for his colleagues. These include:
- improving psychosocial safety for staff by implementing safety culture surveys (both pre-and post-implementation of action plans)
- establishing and steering working parties to address concerns from the surveys and implementing action plans to address key issues
- developing safety videos to demonstrate how to use equipment safely and prevent injury
- Implementing an easier QR Code process to submit hazards and incidents reports via mobile phones which most frontline staff have ready access to.
