Explore the health and fitness requirements of different public services
Metropolitan Police Requirements To become a constable in the metropolitan police you must meet a certain criteria to be considered. These requirements are:
-Eyesight requirements, eyesight is very important for a police officer to have. If you have poor eyesight in the metropolitan police you will struggle and it will put you in more danger when patrolling. If you are not able to spot things from a long or short distance then it may lead to you being useless in those situations.
-Hearing requirements, hearing is necessary because if you are partially deaf then you will not be able to interact with the public properly. It can also cause you to be slower at learning things if you cannot hear what the officer teaching you is saying.
-Diet & Bmi requirements, diet and BMI is of the upmost importance since Bmi dictates how healthy you are by multiplying you weight by your height and dividing that answer to get your Bmi. You would then check on
-Fitness requirements
-Health conditions & medication usage
The metropolitan police take pride in its officers and staff, and have to make sure that the people they employ are capable as they fill jobs that can be tough and demanding and as a result all new recruits need to be fit and healthy. The Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) checks this by way of a medical assessment and Job Related Fitness Test (JRFT) as part of the recruitment process for new police such as constables, special constables, volunteer police ,police community support officers and designated detention officers. You will be asked to complete a confidential health declaration and attend a medical assessment to check your hearing, eyesight, urine, blood pressure, height/weight and breathing for these roles.
The main fitness tests the metropolitan police have to go through to pass their selection is the Endurance test (bleep test). You will be asked to keep running between two points which are 15 meters apart. The speed you must run is dictated by a bleep, and the time allowed to run from one side to the other will get shorter as the level increases. This endurance test is in place to make sure that the people who are hired by the metropolitan police, have enough stamina to keep up with criminals, or to be able to fight or get in a tussle with a criminal and be able to restrain him until back up arrives, which usually takes 15 minutes. These requirements are necessary because they enable the officer to work more productively and qualify you to be able to keep up with the demands of the everyday job.
I will now talk about the different strengths and weaknesses that each one of these health and fitness requirements within the metropolitan police have.
Strengths:
Test of pushing and pulling power tests the sheer strength the recruit has and if they have enough strength to be able to restrain and tackle criminals. It measures how much strength they have and is normally called Dynamic Strength test. The dynamic strength exercise involves performing 5 seated chest presses and 5 seated back pulls on a piece of equipment called a "dyno". The average force of the 5 pushes/pulls will be your recorded score. During this element you will have the opportunity to perform 3 practice pull/pushes immediately followed by your 5 recorded attempts. To pass your recorded 5 attempts need to average over 35kg of pulling power on the pulling test and then 34kg on the push test. This test is good because it measures as I said your Dynamic Strength and the set requirements are in place to replicate how much strength you would need in an actual situation and for that reason this test is useful for met police recruits. Another strength is that the police fitness test has become progressively easier over the past 5 years and the requirements have been set a lot lower so that people with a basic level of fitness should be able to pass it with very little training. This in theory is good because it allows a lot more people in to the police force and increase their manpower and workforce.
Weaknesses:
Although the fitness tests are set low to allow more people to join the metropolitan police, I believe that the requirements are set far too low as to pass the Endurance Shuttle Run which is one of the main fitness tests to get in to the met police and is used across many different public services. I am certain that these requirements are set too low because you only need a level of 5.4 on the test to pass which equates to running 3 and ½ minutes which is practically nothing if you compare the met police to any other public service. Another weakness the met police have in their health and fitness requirements for joining the service is the lack of variety in the fitness side. They realistically only have two fitness tests that you have to pass which does not really measure a recruits fitness levels properly as some people are stronger in certain areas rather than others. It does not really give the service an insight to how much the recruit can cope with.

Recommendations to improve:
There are many different ways that the metropolitan police could improve their fitness and health requirements thus improving the working standard of the employees.