What Is a Psychosocial Trained Person (PTP) — and Does Your Company Need One?

Somewhere in your organisation chart, DOSH expects to find a name. Not a committee, not a wellness budget line — a specific person trained to run your psychosocial risk assessment. That person is the Psychosocial Trained Person (PTP), and if you employ people in Malaysia, the question of who yours is has a due date attached to it.

I am one (DOSH registration PTP-291/26), so let me explain the role from the inside.

What a PTP is, in plain terms

The PTP is the person appointed by an employer to carry out the PRisMA 2024 assessment, Malaysia's official framework for identifying and managing psychosocial hazards at work. The role is defined in the DOSH Guidelines on Psychosocial Risk Assessment and Management at the Workplace 2024, and it sits at the centre of the whole process: the PTP administers the screening, calculates the scores, classifies the risk, and puts a written report in the employer's hands.

The legal structure is worth reading carefully. Under the Occupational Safety and Health (Amendment) Act 2022, employers shall conduct risk assessments. That part is statutory duty. The guideline then states employers should appoint a PTP to assist them in conducting PRisMA. In practice the two travel together: the assessment is required, and the PTP is the person DOSH has defined to run it properly.

The six duties of a PTP

The guideline assigns the PTP six processes:

1. Identifying psychosocial hazards in the workplace
2. Assessing existing control measures
3. Prioritising risk according to the findings
4. Managing the risks appropriately
5. Reassessing the risks and evaluating the effectiveness of risk management
6. Presenting the findings to the employer and maintaining records

Behind each of those sits a specific instrument. Hazard identification uses the LEO26 screening tool. Control measures are assessed against the EPC23 checklist. Risk management follows the PRiMA action-plan table. None of this is improvised; the method is standardised, which is exactly why the role requires training.

What the work actually looks like

A PRisMA assessment runs work unit by work unit, including management units, which surprises some employers (top management gets assessed too). The PTP distributes LEO26 to every employee in the targeted units, collects the responses, scores them, and determines each unit's risk status. High-risk units trigger the EPC23 review of what the employer is currently doing about psychosocial hazards, and the findings feed a prioritised action plan. The full sequence is mapped in the step-by-step process guide.

Two obligations shape how the PTP handles your data. The report must reach the employer within 30 days of completing the assessment. And the PTP is bound to confidentiality under the Personal Data Protection Act 2010: individual responses stay inside the analysis, and what the employer receives is risk status at work-unit level.

Who should your PTP be?

The guideline requires appropriate training, integrity and confidentiality. It does not require a medical background. But consider what the role actually involves: interpreting screening data about workload, job control and support; presenting uncomfortable findings to management; and recognising when a workplace pattern has become a clinical situation for somebody in it.

An Occupational Health Doctor who is also a certified PTP reads those results in clinical context, and knows the referral pathways when something serious surfaces. That combination is still rare in Malaysia.

How to appoint one

Decide the scope first: which work units, how many employees, one site or several. A typical assessment runs three to six weeks from announcement to report, depending on size. If you have an internal candidate, they will need the DOSH-recognised training before they can act as your PTP; if you engage an external PTP, scope and confidentiality terms go into the appointment letter. Either way, the appointment is the employer's act — the duty to assess stays with you.

Dr. Kirath Sidhu (Dr. Harkirath Singh Harbans Singh) is a registered Occupational Health Doctor and certified Psychosocial Trained Person (DOSH PTP-291/26). He provides PRisMA 2024 assessments for employers across Penang and Malaysia through ASP Medical Group.