Safety & Health Policy

Commitment

Duke-NUS recognizes that the provision of a safe and healthy work environment for employees, students, contractors and visitors is not just a legal requirement but essential for achieving its mission of transforming medicine, improving lives. The School is also committed to ensuring that the community and environment are not placed at added risk from its activities.

Objectives

The School will take measures to achieve and maintain compliance with all applicable national and university safety and health laws, guidelines and best practices by:

• Maintaining a robust Safety Management System through an integrated collection of processes, procedures, and programs that ensure a proactive approach to safety
• Performing risk assessment to identify and eliminate or mitigate risks to an acceptable level
• Taking steps to prevent injury and ill health as far as is reasonably possible
• Managing waste generation to reduce harmful waste production, wherever feasible
• Implementing adequate and mandatory safety training for all staff, students and contractors including on-the-job supervision to ensure competency in their work
• Reporting and investigating all accidents and incidents to determine the root cause(s) to prevent recurrence
• Establishing regular communication with all relevant parties
• Continuously reviewing and improving the School’s safety performance

Responsibilities

Safety is everyone’s responsibility: junior staff for their own safety and health and that of others working with them; senior staff for ensuring that those working under their supervision are adequately trained and contractors, vendors and visitors are briefed on the safety issues; and management for taking steps to ensure safety and minimize health risk for all.

Application of the Policy

This policy is applicable to the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School and all its activities.