Book Reviews |
Employment Law and Occupational Health—A Practical Handbook
Edited by Joan Lewis and Greta Thornbury. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 2006. ISBN 1-4051-4972-8. Price £27.99 (paperback). 216 pp.This is a concise book covering the practical aspects of employment law and principle health and safety legislation for occupational health (OH) professionals. The authors' backgrounds are in OH nursing and human resources.
In their introduction, the authors explain that their book is not intended to be a legal or clinical textbook. As such it does not set out to duplicate other well-known publications on employment law, such as Occupational Health Law by Diana Kloss. Instead, the book takes a more practical and everyday approach to employment law relating to occupational health.
Towards the front of the book are useful tables covering legal cases, legal statutes and statutory instruments. Chapters then follow on pre-employment health assessment, records and reports, health surveillance, occupational health services, sickness absence management and termination of employment—topics all very relevant to practising OH professionals. Throughout the book, there are well-presented case studies that demonstrate practically the aspect of law being considered.
I have few criticisms of the book, although I believe that the chapter on health surveillance might inadvertently confuse the reader by initially detailing the role of health surveillance as being one of occupational disease detection, but then subsequently combining both health surveillance and fitness for work processes in the text. Two separate chapters might perhaps have been better.
This is a well-researched, practical and easily readable book that represents good value for money. The book is likely to be of use to all occupational physicians, but perhaps especially so to those new to the speciality, or those studying for the Diploma and Associateship examinations. The book should be an essential read for doctors in specialist training. One drawback of the book is that it does not venture into the more complex and controversial aspects of OH law—for example where there is differing opinion between OH staff and an employee's general practitioner or specialist. The book will therefore be of more limited use to those occupational physicians who already have a high level of OH and employment law knowledge, but still a very useful reference tool.
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