Assessment Task 1 - Evaluating a public health screening program in a specific organisational context Students will assume the role of a Workplace Health Advisor working within a large corporate...

Contents
REPORT ON DRUG AND ALCOHOL SCREENING TEST FOR EMPLOYEES    2
INTRODUCTION    2
BENEFITS AND HARM OF ALCOHOL AND DRUG BASED SCREENING    2
QUALITY PARAMETERS – ACCURACY, SENSITIVITY AND SPECIFICITY    4
REFERENCES    6
REPORT ON DRUG AND ALCOHOL SCREENING TEST FOR EMPLOYEES
INTRODUCTION
Safety and security of employees at workplace is critical for functioning of an organisation influencing the organisational performance. Employee’s attitudes, beliefs and practice towards drugs and alcohol use/abuse indirectly reflects the commitment of an organisation towards workplace health and safety (Grossmeier et al., 2016). In the present report, the benefits and harm of implementing drug and alcohol screening program will be discussed in
ief with suggestions in context of programs considered for implementation. The claims and facts will be backed with evidence based research.
BENEFITS AND HARM OF ALCOHOL AND DRUG BASED SCREENING
Alcohol and Drug screening tests has been employed at workplace since many years, but with passage of time it has faced number of legal and ethical issues. From employers point of view applying such a screening test ensure their workplace is safe from any type of abuse and the
and image must be built over highly followed ethical and legal guidelines. On the contrary, employee’s take this as a step towards infringement of privacy. Such ethical dilemma occasionally put the management under pressure as both employee satisfaction and organisation’s safe and ethical workplace commitment is imperative for organisational performance. In the present section, the advantages and disadvantages of alcohol and drug screening method at workplace will be discussed in
ief (Schultz and Schultz, 2015).
One of the biggest advantage of implementing any drug and alcohol based screening test is maintenance of workplace health and safety. By screening employees and each member of organisation for alcohol and drug abuse, the host company ensures none of the members pose a threat to each other nor create a workplace of risk and poor security. This is highly detrimental for healthcare organisations where patient lives and staff’s lives are equally important. Industries that involves heavy machinery and transfe
able materials usually follow such screening methods (Frone, 2016).
Every year millions of dollars is lost by the companies in legal liabilities. Workplace accidents might be caused by myriad of factors but employers are mostly at loss due to poor maintenance of workplace health and safety standards recommended. Therefore to avoid any legal issues from any front, it is better to take a preventive approach that will keep the legal issues at bay. Secondly, screening for drug and alcohol spread awareness among employees thus making reporting of any such events stronger at workplace (Gostin and Wiley, 2016).
The second chance and improving someone’s life is another advantage of workplace drug and alcohol screening. While in most companies it leads to termination of job or sacking of employees, companies or organisations with strong policies for drug and alcohol gives second chance to the employees through psychological counselling. Thus, employees with drug abuse can take such opportunity to reflect on their habit and get back to normal functioning. While at one end the organisation is making the organisation free from risk, at the same time it is helping the whole healthcare system and society to reduce the menace of drug abuse (Crosgrove et al., 2016).
Increase safe working environments leads to safer workplace and increasing productivity. For example employee’s behaviour post alcohol and drug abuse very often creates unfortunate incidents that tarnishes...