Faculty of Occupational Medicine (United Kingdom)

Faculty of Occupational Medicine

Formation	1978
Location	London, SE10 United Kingdom
Membership	1835
President	Professor Steven Nimmo
Website	www.fom.ac.uk

The Faculty of Occupational Medicine (FOM) is the professional and educational body for occupational medicine in the United Kingdom. It seeks to ensure the highest standards in the practice of occupational medicine, overseeing the continuing professional development and revalidation of its members.

It is also focused on promoting and supporting health at work, with its mission statement being ‘to drive improvement in the health of the working age population’.^[1] One way it achieves this goal is through partnerships with other medical bodies, such as the Safe, Effective, Quality Occupational Health Service accreditation scheme it runs with the Royal College of Physicians.^[2] The Faculty works closely with the UK Government advising on Occupational Medicine and improving workplace health.^[3]

The Faculty is a member of the Council for Work and Health^[4] and The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges.^[5]

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Hannah Newstead: My name is Hannah Newstead and I am currently studying Adult Nursing at LSBU. The teaching and facilities here are really high tech and the lecturers really know their stuff. It’s very exciting how they are able to teach us and they are still practicing themselves; I think that is really important, especially as medicine is ever changing. Renee Francis: Within Learning Disability Nursing people come from a range of backgrounds. There are students who have worked as support workers before, there are older students with families who come onto the programme, there’s also students who come with A levels that may have family experiences of learning disability so we really get a range of people with all sorts of experiences, but if your enthusiastic about learning disability nursing and you’ve got a real passion for people with learning disabilities then this is really the programme for you. Rose Mahoney: The teaching here is amazing, we get so many extra speakers in and specialists; so we not only get our lecturers but our lecturers know the specialists in these areas and we get them in; which is amazing because we get the right information from the right people. The facilities; we basically have a fake hospital at our University, it’s amazing and we have a SimMan and a SimJunior and I think practising on them and that experience is just priceless as it’s as close as you can get until real life. Nana Osei-Mensah: My name is Nana Osei -Mensah and I am studying Midwifery. I’ve just come to the skills lab to learn how to attach babies and teach mothers how to hand express, so we come here and we practice with the dolls and the knitted breasts and just get a bit more confident of breast feeding so we can help the mothers. Christine Peterson-Mckinney: Throughout the two, three or four years students go through what we call the Occupational Therapy process. Over that time they are in classes for a period of time but they are also in clinical work, and over the two, three or four years it comes to four clinical placements which is equivalent to about 1200 hours of clinical time in various sites all around London and southern England. Bernard Danderson: Diagnostic Radiography involves taking x-rays of patients, the course revolves around anatomy and physics and it’s quite enjoyable and quite interesting. If you want to study at a University that is renowned for its education in terms of healthcare I think LBSU is the place. Adele Stewart-Lord: We have a virtual laboratory in which we enable our students to practice set up of patients on linear accelerators similar to what they would experience in the clinical department. During these set-ups students become comfortable in using the clinical equipment we also have an additional treatment planning suite in which students can then practice skills to become competent practitioners in the clinical department. And when they complete their degree they are eligible to register with the Health Professions Council as Therapeutic Radiographers. Tess Lugos: Well one of the unique features of this programme (BSc Chinese Medicine - Acupuncture) is we have lecturers from both the UK and China. Things I recommend about the programme are the excellence in teaching, the facilities we have in this K2 building which is lovely and new and everything works, the relationship we have with the Confucius Institute which means we have the variety of lecturers’ and the experiences that they bring. Rockefeller Zimba: The placements that I did have really helped me within my career path, I’ve always been interested in mental health and the placements I have been sent on were on acute wards, secondary intensive care units and also in the community. I completed my course this year, went through the interview process and I’m working as a mental health social worker in a community mental health team. Harry Macdonald-Lucas: I would definitely recommend studying Social Work at LSBU because the Health and Social Care faculty has a really good reputation here and a lot of the lecturers have a lot of credibility; they have published a lot of journals and books and south bank tends to be very well respected among other people I’ve met. Christina Samuel-Manaj: The bursaries that we are afforded and the funding is definitely vital to what we do here. If I didn’t have the bursary I wouldn’t be the student I am now. Hannah Newstead: I chose LSBU as its one of the best for nursing and I think the fact that it is so closely connected to some of the best hospitals in London like UCLH (University College London Hospital), Guy’s and St Thomas’; it’s a real selling point, I mean if you get to work at these hospitals you are going to experience lots of different things. Rose Mahoney: I one hundred percent recommend LSBU to other nursing students because the experience you get is just phenomenal. Rockefeller Zimba: LSBU did transform my life, throughout the three years I was studying here I was learning a lot; developing myself personally and professionally and I agree it did change my life.

History

The organisation was established in 1978 as a faculty of the Royal College of Physicians,^[6] becoming an independent body with its own governance, membership and finances in December 1992.^[7] Originally focused exclusively on the professional development of occupational physicians, the Faculty has since expanded its portfolio of qualifications to include a diplomas aimed at benchmarking the standards of occupational health provision in fields as diverse as general practice, aviation medicine and disability assessment medicine.^[8]

Activities

The Faculty is primarily responsible for education and training of medical doctors who work in occupational medicine in the UK.^[9] It devises and oversees the implementation of the Specialist Curriculum in Occupational Medicine, and administers over postgraduate training within the NHS, armed forces and industry. It also runs the MFOM Part 1 and Part 2 examinations which assess Specialty Registrars throughout their training, successful completion of which leads, in most cases, to entry onto the General Medical Council’s specialist register and the ability to use the postnominals MFOM.^[10] Election of Members of the Faculty to Fellowship (conferring the postnominals FFOM) is the Faculty’s way of recognising those who have made a particularly significant contribution to the practice of occupational medicine, or contributed significantly to the work of the Faculty.^[11]

The faculty’s official journal is Occupational and Environmental Medicine, a monthly peer-reviewed medical journal which covers research in occupational and environmental medicine.^[12] Alongside this the Faculty produces a wide number of publications and guidance papers, including the highly influential Ethics Guidance for Occupational Health Practice, Guidance on Alcohol and Drug Misuse in the Workplace and Fitness for Work: The Medical Aspects, which now in its 5th edition.

Governance

The Faculty is governed by a board of trustees which is responsible for the strategic direction of the organisation and for its governance. The board meets four times a year, and to reflect the geographical diversity of members two of these meetings are held at the Faculty offices in London, while the remainder take place in different locations across the UK.^[13]

The faculty is registered with the Charity Commission for England and Wales^[14] and the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator (OSCR).^[15]