Drug Screening and Brief Intervention †Free Samples to Students

Question: Discuss about the Drug Screening and Brief Intervention. Answer: Introduction: Employee screening is a process that involves investigation on the employee health for excessive alcohol consumption and drug abuse. Methods commonly used include urine test and blood test. Screening of employees, especially in an organization which has many employees has both benefits and disadvantages. There are three main benefits of employee screening. First, employee screening ensures compliance with the law. It is a requirement in law that employers comply with an Act on Health and Safety at Work of 1974 which requires that welfare, health and safety of employees should be highly regarded in the workplace. According to the Act, an employer can be prosecuted because of allowing employees to work under influence of alcohol or drugs. Moreover, the Act requires that employees be responsible for their good health and the health of those working with them in their workplace. In addition, it is important that the organization carry out employee screening on a monthly basis so as to ensure that all the three thousand employees work under health condition acceptable by the law (Saitz Galanter, 2015). Furthermore, with the high number of employees, it is essential that the organization carries out screening because failure to comply with this law may result to high loses in terms of fines and compensations. Therefore, for this reason I recommend that the CEO implements a monthly screening program. However, for this implementation to be effectively enacted, the CEO need to consider establishing a company policy that supports the Health and safety Act of 1974 and specifically describe how screening of employees should be conducted. Secondly, screening of employees on a monthly basis increases company productivity through ensuring that all the employees are in good health working conditions and that their potential is maximally utilized. Moreover, screening result assist managers in allocation of duties to their staffs. Therefore, I recommend that the CEO should implement employee screening program on a monthly basis so as to ensure high levels of productivity in the organization. This is possible through establishment of a policy which states that after screening employees under drug influence or under excessive alcohol consumption are expelled. Thirdly, implementation of an employee screening program will assist in risk management within the organization. Researchers have concl uded that employees under substance influence are likely to cause accidents and loses in organizations. Therefore, establishing a monthly screening program will help in reducing chances of risk occurrence. On the other hand, employee screening comes with three main disadvantages. First, it may lead to loss of well skilled and talented employees especially when a policy is put in place stipulating that employees under substance influence should be expelled. However, according to my opinion, this disadvantage should not obstruct the CEO from implementing the screening program because there are many healthy jobless people in the market who can always replace such employees. Secondly, a monthly screening program comes with a huge accompanied cost especially now that the organization has about three thousand workers. This gives the implication that employee screening on a monthly basis is expensive. However, according to my opinion, the CEO should reduce the frequency of the screening to once in three months(Verstraete, 2014) Moreover, the cost of screening is much less compared to the expected fines and compensations that occur due to failure to screen employees. Thirdly, employee screenin g may expose employee personal or private information to the public domain which is very dangerous in regard to employee privacy. However, according to my opinion, the CEO should ensure that proper human resource measure is put in place to ensure that employee information is well protected. A company with an accuracy of 95% drug and alcohol test is a very reliable company. This is because an accuracy of 95% implies that the efficiency of the equipment used is above 95% and the method used is very accurate with an observer having a high experience in results interpretation. However, it is important for the company to produce evidence of such a high level of accuracy. Therefore, it is not just enough to hear about a companys accuracy because accuracy is combination of environmental, physical and process factors. So, the CEO should assess the process and methods used by the various companies. In most cases, screening tests are optimized for sensitivity. The sensitivity of a test shows how well it is capable of detecting a particular condition in a specific population when it is present. An increase in the sensitivity of an instrument increases the number of false positives it is capable to detect. Moreover, the test should be able to identify all the components with the defined condition. For this case, a 95% sensitivity indicates that the equipment is capable to detect the presence of alcohol or drug trace up to a 95% accuracy. This indicates that the specific equipment used is very sensitive. On the other hand, specificity of a given test indicates the tests ability to identify people or staff who do not have the defined condition or disorder. Therefore, these results indicate that the equipment used is capable of detecting staff who do not abuse drug or use alcohol excessively up to an accuracy of 89%. It is also worth noting that both specificity and sensitivity are i mportant parameters used in the selection of a screening instruments depending on the defined condition. Moreover, when an equipment of 89% specificity and 95% sensitivity is used, then positive results will be an indication of persons who are under influence of drug or consume excessive alcohol while negative results will indicate people who are not under drug or alcohol influence. Furthermore, the specificity will be used to predict negative results while sensitivity will be used to predict positive results management. (Fletcher, Fletcher, Fletcher, 2014) Positive screening results should be addressed. Test Result Truth Positive 0.001% (0.03) Negative 99.999%(2999.97) Therefore, according to the table, for every screening, rounding off the truth outcome, there is zero employee in the organization likely to be found in excessive alcohol consumption or drug abuse. I would not recommend for this test to be carried as a regular monthly screening test. This is because the prevalence is very low which implies that there are minimal chances of an employee in this organization to abuse drug or consume alcohol excessively. According to table of results verse truth for this specific company, there are 3000 staffs and considering that there is a 0.001% anticipated prevalence of drug and/or alcohol. Then the predicted positive value = 3000 x 0.001 = 0.03 staffs while the predicted negative value = 3000 x 99.999= 2999.97 staffs. The table below summaries the results. Rounding off the truth outcome, there is zero employee in the organization likely to be found in excessive alcohol consumption or drug abuse. Therefore, this test is not necessary. Moreover, the cost implication of this test may be high because of the large number of employees involved. I recommend that the CEO should not implement the use of this method in as a monthly screening test since it will translate to income investment for less significant result. References Fletcher, R. H., Fletcher, S. W., Fletcher, G. S. (2014). Clinical epidemiology : the essentials. Philadelphia : Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams Wilkins. Saitz, R., Galanter, M. (2015). Alcohol/drug screening and brief intervention management: advances in evidence-based practice. Binghamton, NY: Haworth Medical Press. Verstraete, A. G. (2014). Workplace drug testing. London ; Chicago: Pharmaceutical Press,.