Patient and Public Engagement Health and Safety

Patient and Public Engagement Health and Safety

Health and Safety is of paramount importance to the Patient and Public Engagement Team; we need to ensure that potential hazards are assessed thoroughly and that we cover as wide a range of control measures in our policies and risk assessments as possible.

Therefore, you must ensure you complete the request form a minimum of four weeks prior to your event (events, talks or school visits) and send it through to our Patient Engagement team at engagement@swast.nhs.uk.  The request form can be found here

Once your event is approved, we will send you a risk assessment which you must read and sign for before attending your event. 

It is your responsibility to then undertake a dynamic risk assessment at your event (or you may appoint someone to do this on your behalf) and annotate any changes on the assessment document. You must keep the Patient Engagement team informed of any changes to the original risk assessment and send the altered document through to the Patient Engagement team. If you’re not sure what a dynamic risk assessment is, or haven’t completed one before, we’ve included some helpful tips below.

You MUST have completed an assessment before your event can be fully approved, regardless of availability and volunteers. We keep our risk assessments for 12 months and all are approved by the Trust Health and Safety team.  

More information about Risk Assessments can be found on the staff internal intranet 

If you have any questions, please contact engagement@swast.nhs.uk

Dynamic Risk Assessment

A Dynamic Risk Assessment is “the continuous process of identifying hazards, assessing risk, taking action to eliminate or reduce risk, monitoring and reviewing, in the rapidly changing circumstances of an operational incident.”

Simply use the original risk assessment template we provide you to annotate potential hazards and what you would do to mitigate or eliminate them i.e. you’re in an enclosed space with large groups of people and a vehicle, you would decide in this case that the engine should not be left running to prevent the inhalation of noxious gasses. 

When completing a Dynamic Risk Assessment remember to look at everything as a potential hazard (identify the hazard- reduce or stop the activity, depending on risk). They need to take place when on site and should be done at the beginning of the event, and throughout activities, especially if the activity has changed or location is moved. 

If you’re still unsure how to complete a dynamic risk assessment, please email engagement@swast.nhs.uk for support.

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