pre-employment screening

[duck]

is anyone involved in pre-employment screening for roles which involve manual handling? I would be interested to know whether this is found to be useful, what sort of screening is carried out and whether it is done routinely or only in some cases. I would also be grateful for any refs. regarding this matter.
Thanks

Have a look at the pre employment section of this guideline for the UK (Pub March 2000)

OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH GUIDELINES FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF LOW BACK PAIN AT WORK: EVIDENCE REVIEW AND RECOMMENDATIONS

The first evidence-based guidelines for UK occupational health practice have now been published. These are based on a systematic review of the world literature written by Professors Gordon Waddell and Kim Burton. The review was prepared in consultation with a Faculty working group, chaired by Dr Tim Carter, which included representatives of the main occupational health and back care professions. The published report includes the evidence review and the recommendations for practitioners derived from it. The recommendations provide a structure for clinical prevention and for occupational health case management where each recommendation is explicitly linked to the evidence which supports it and so can be readily justified. The text of the summary leaflet for practitioners is also included as is the text of the complimentary Royal College of General Practitioners clinical guidelines.

The report provides a comprehensive guide to the ways in which occupational health practitioners can reduce the scale of this major problem: demonstrating that non-occupational and behavioural factors are important contributors; showing that early mobilisation and temporary job adaptation are the keys to an early return to full activity, and indicating that early return can do much to prevent back pain becoming a chronic and intractable problem.

This evidence-based guideline project was a partnership between the Faculty and the British Occupational Health Research Foundation. It was funded by Blue Circle Industries as their 1999 community project. It is hoped that the recommendations will improve back pain prevention and management by laying the ground for a collaborative approach involving those at work, their employers, occupational health adviser and both primary and secondary care sectors of the health care system. In aiming for this it challenges approaches to the management of back pain in primary care and identifies a major unmet need for rehabilitation services.