Health and Safety at Work and finding trustworthy organisation websites

World Day for Safety and Health at Work

On the 28th April, it is World Day for Safety and Health at Work so we thought we would take a look at resources which may help when learning about health and safety. It is something which affects the workplace but is also relevant to the home, for example.

Most  (if not all) vocational courses at College cover this topic and everyone who works needs to know about it. You may even be asked about it in an interview. Health and Safety covers anything from use of computers and manual handling to fire safety to working with chemicals, food or specific tools.

Finding quality websites on health and safety

When using the internet to help with research, it is best to concentrate on information from trusted organisations. For example:

Government departments - identify these by the .gov at the end of the URL e.g. www.hse.gov.uk is the Health and Safety Executive website and www.food.gov deals with food hygiene. The Health and Safety Act  itself (plus other legislation) can be found at https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1974/37 .

Charities and other trusted organisations - identify these by the .org at the end of the URL e.g. e.g. http://www.safetygroupsuk.org.uk (Safety Groups UK - a  charity that promotes health and safety).
You may find a .com website useful like The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (https://www.rospa.com/) but as a rule you need to treat these sites with care as anyone can set up a .co.uk or .com website whereas organisations and government departments can only register to use the .org and .gov websites.

Hospitals and NHS websites - identify these by the .nhs.uk at the end of the URL. The NHS patient safety website has all sorts of interesting information for those of you working in/ studying Health and Social Care particularly.

Academic websites, identified by the .ac.uk web extension, can also be trusted but perhaps not so relevant here. The College's moodle site (including your course page) has .ac.uk at the end of the main URL and includes information and resources created by your Lecturers.

If you are not sure, take a look at the About Us section of the website (if there isn't one, think twice about using it). Who are they? Who writes the website? What is their experience/ qualifications?

Google tip: To restrict your search to just government websites, for example, use site:.gov.uk in your search (Others would be site:.nhs.uk or site.ac.uk or site:.org.uk). You can also do this site:.uk to just find UK sites - something that is very important with anything to do with legislation. Other countries do not have the same standards and laws for health and safety as the UK although much may be the same.

Other online resources

The Health and Safety Executive website has a list of the ten worst Health and Safety myths. They also have a collection of videos on their website and a related YouTube channel. These include case studies and examples where health and safety has gone wrong.

They also have an e-learning package Slips and Trips which is free to use.

The Jisc Hairdressing Training resource (available from our Electronic Resources page on Moodle) has an activity where hairdressing students can test their knowledge of Health and Safety when blow-drying hair. It includes particular hazards in a salon environment like turning heating tongs off and not leaving them unattended, safety with perm solutions and keeping the salon clean.

Use Infotrac to find examples in the news or in magazines which demonstrate what happens if health and safety good practice isn't followed or where accidents have happened.

Remember also, that we have books too. The general books are at 363.11 with other subjects having specialised books in their own areas (e.g. construction 692.9 or 624.0684).

Info Trac - online newspaper articles and journals

Online newspaper and journal database

This week, we've been going in to some Journalism groups down at MJC to explain Harvard referencing but also to show them how to access the electronic resources which are made available to PRC students by the Learning Resource Centre. When you use these, you know you are using quality resources which when used in your assignments can get you extra marks.

Newspaper articles are great for finding examples to illustrate points in your assignments (or crimes, accidents, new buildings, events etc.). Journals articles are generally short informative pieces often about a more detailed aspect of a topic.

One particular resource which is useful for all students is InfoTrac - a database of newspaper and journals database.
Have you noticed that a lot of newspaper websites are now restricting the number of articles you can view or they cut off the article half way through with an advert encouraging you to subscribe? Have you looked for journal articles and found that the site wants payment?

If you use InfoTrac, you will not have to pay for access, you just need to follow the link from the electronic resources page on Moodle (under the Learning Resource Centre tab) and if asked (outside PRC), choose Shibboleth access, then Peterborough Regional College and input your network login and password.

There are a range of video tutorials to help you. See the video tutorial below for a basic guide to searching for journal articles (our database includes newspaper articles and these can be searched with the journals or separately in the same way).

More tutorials are found here.

If you are a student at UCP, you have access to a number of journal databases similar to this. The ARU digital library gives you access to Academic OneFile which you use in much the same way as the PRC database (and you have access to both).

Keywords and Topic Finder

Searching for information digitally or in books relies on you first thinking of different keywords which the authors may have used related to your topic. InfoTrac has a really useful feature to help you with this called Topic Finder. It  finds other topics related to your search and displays them in tile or wheel format. You can then click on any tile or segment to see results from the database. When we've shown this to students in sessions, they have been impressed. See the video below and then have a go.

If you want any more information or help in using newspapers and journals in your work or searching for information, please do ask in the Learning Resource Centre. We can also do demonstrations or sessions in classes or with groups if requested.