Workplace Health & Safety

The panel approach provides a forum for sharing ideas, viewpoints, and perspectives. Panel members come with expertise from a variety of case management arenas and have agreed to share their opinions and perspectives in response to specific questions or scenarios. Opinions and perspectives are those of the panel members and do not necessarily represent the views of AAOHN, the Editor, or the Publisher. We encourage readers to submit their questions or scenarios for the panel. This month's panel members include Norman DePaul Brown, EdD, FNP, and Susan Katz Sliski, MSN, RN, CCM.

Although women are often characterized as having “safe” occupations, they are at risk of experiencing occupational musculoskeletal injuries. This cross-sectional study examined the health status, occupations, and job tasks of a random sample of working women (N = 123) to characterize their risk of occupational injury. The women had been employed, most full-time, in the 12 months prior to administration of the telephone survey. The women tended to cluster into two types of occupational exposures. Overall, the women rated their health as excellent. However, those with diagnosed musculoskeletal disorders had significantly worse scores on two scales of the Short Form Health Survey than those without musculoskeletal disorders. Women are exposed to occupational musculoskeletal stressors that increase their risk of experiencing musculoskeletal injuries.

Medical students and health professions students may be at high risk for occupational exposures to blood-borne pathogens. This retrospective chart review explored the rates and types of self-reported blood and body fluid exposures among medical students and health professions students at Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS), the University of Virginia School of Medicine, and Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine between January 1, 2001, and December 31, 2005, to determine an average rate of exposure reported by the student population at EVMS and in Virginia. Students at EVMS reported 126 exposures: 105 were needlestick and sharps injuries and 21 were blood and body fluid exposures. Fifty-one percent of the EVMS students reported not being the original user of the device causing their exposure. Students in Virginia reported 519 exposures. The majority of the exposures occurred in the operating room. Limitations of this study included student curricula not being reviewed and the medical schools' data collection methods not being compared. Student blood and body fluid exposures should be considered a serious and possibly deadly occupational hazard. Students must be deemed competent in basic health care procedures, universal precautions, and suturing techniques before being allowed to assist with or perform patient procedures.

During the past 100 years, America has changed from an agrarian society, where the intent of physical activity was to produce needed materials, to a postindustrial society, where 60% of American adults are not regularly physically active and 25% are not active at all (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1999). With sedentary lifestyle and its attendant consequences on the rise, the occupational health nurse can increase individuals' knowledge, facilitate their decision making, and motivate them to try new behaviors and change existing behaviors. The occupational health nurse can use a model to organize individual workers' information and clarify strategies to promote behavior change. The goal is to decrease the morbidity and mortality associated with sedentary lifestyles of American workers by using the model when individuals present to the occupational health service. Individuals benefit from health care professionals who understand personal risks and communicate strategies to address barriers and concerns when they consider behavior changes such as increasing physical activity.

This study used workers' compensation data to examine seasonal trends of compensable injuries among workers 14 to 24 years old during a 10-year period. These workers had higher rates of occupational injuries in major classes of industry (e.g., service, manufacturing, and agriculture) during summer and non-summer months. The overall rate of occupational injury was significantly higher for male workers than female workers in all age groups (p & .001). Young workers experienced occupational injuries within less than 3 hours of starting a shift. Among males, injury rates were highest in the manufacturing industry for those 14 to 18 years old and in the service industry for those 22 to 24 years old for both seasons. These results indicate that preventing injuries among young workers should be a primary concern of education and health and safety professionals and parents.