The federal Occupational Health Safety Network is expanding exponentially. With the recent addition of two new reporting categories for needlesticks and blood exposures, a national reporting system that touts local interventions is on the horizon.
While emphasizing its support for violence prevention programs to protect healthcare workers, one of the nation’s leading occupational health groups says it does not support promulgation of a new standard by OSHA as currently outlined.
When an employee reports an injury or illness, the astute employee health professional is well aware that many other life stresses and work pressures may be simmering just beneath the surface.
The World Health Organization is poised to begin vaccinating healthcare workers with an experimental new Ebola vaccine, but continues to hold off as an outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo appeared to be dissipating as this report was filed.
Employee health professionals can convince administration that safe patient handling equipment is a good investment if they show how an increasingly immobile patient population affects the physical health of the worker and the fiscal health of the hospital.
As hospital violence has become a national issue and the subject of a possible federal regulation, researchers are showing that interventions using the basic epidemiologic principles of measurement and feedback can reduce unit-level violence by patients against healthcare workers.
