Pre-employment medical
The pre-employment assessment will be carried out by Occupational Health and Welfare medical staff as per current PSNI medical standards.
It is expected that a student officer will successfully complete their training course and therefore be deployed as an operational officer which means that they must be fit for the full range of operational duty, throughout the service area, while working the full range of shifts including night working.
While the core of police duties is almost universal, each police service has its own challenges dealing with local community problems. Officers within the PSNI are all routinely armed, the majority will be response drivers and a high proportion may be called upon to carry out public order duties often for prolonged periods necessitating the wearing of specialist personal protective equipment.
With the changes in policing, it is increasingly likely that an individual officer will be spending more time out actively policing the community including on foot, cycling or in a variety of vehicles. Officers need to be able to use reasonable force to protect the public, their colleagues and themselves in confrontational, public order and arrest situations. They need both physical and emotional resilience to effectively carry out this role.
The medical assessment considers if the applicant is capable of carrying out the core activities of a constable in line with national guidelines on police recruitment but also takes into account the local policing challenges in Northern Ireland. It is expected that applicants will have already been adopting a healthy lifestyle with regard to diet and exercise before the assessment.
