Occupational Health

Pre-employment Health Screening

If you are made a conditional offer of employment with Te Whatu Ora, we need to know about any disabilities or health conditions that may affect you.  This is so that in your new post, where appropriate, we can advise your manager of any support needs you may have and how these can be provided for.  

We also need to ask about conditions that could pose risks to patients so that we can assess these and consider how any risk can be avoided whilst assisting you in carrying out your role with us successfully. This can be achieved with most health problems and disabilities.

If you are offered a position, and therefore a prospective employee of Te Whatu Ora, you must provide relevant information to the Occupational Health Service. Failure to disclose information about a physical or mental health problem that could affect patient safety would be a breach of this duty that could result in your offer being withdrawn (or if this comes to light after you have commenced employment, disciplinary action).

Managing immunity and/or protection forms another essential part of our health and safety responsibilities for workers and patients. Appropriate immunisation will help protect the worker and patients from acquiring a vaccine-preventable disease. The use of Infection Prevention Control practices is effective in managing the risk of infectious diseases (such as COVID-19), Whooping Cough, MMR) within the healthcare setting. All Health NZ workers are recommended to remain up to date with current vaccination advice to minimise their risk of infection and transmission.

In cases where we need to adopt what we refer to as a “fast track” recruitment process, we may invite preferred candidates to complete pre-employment screening before a formal conditional offer is made in order to speed up the recruitment process. Completing screening at this point is not mandatory and totally at the discretion of the candidate.