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If your workplace is downsizing, don't be surprised if this causes some tension between occupational health and safety.
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Keeping employees from gaining weight is a major challenge in any workplace, but a new study shows that in fact, very simple workplace design changes can help stave off weight gain.1 However, these interventions by themselves aren't likely to lead to weight loss.
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Direct costs of workplace injuries are fairly straightforward, but indirect costs are often ten times that amount. If occupational health doesn't consider indirect costs, which may be difficult to compute, prevention programs may appear not worth the expense.
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The question "What can kill a worker?" will give you a different kind of answer than asking "What can hurt a worker?" says Gregg Clark, director of global occupational safety and hygiene for Dallas-based Kimberly-Clark Corporation, where a strategy of focusing on fatality elimination is currently being implemented.
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The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) briefly reopened the comment period on the proposed rule to record work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs). The comments came from May 17 to June 16, about a month after two teleconferences focused on concerns of small businesses.
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As the health care workforce ages, the severity of work-related injuries is increasing, requiring new strategies for protecting workers. At the top of the list: Preventing falls, which are already the second most common cause of reportable injury in hospitals.
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Safe lift programs save money, and they save more if they are comprehensive and have leadership support. That finding from a new study of workers' compensation and lift-related injuries in long-term care provides a strong, new underpinning for the financial benefits of safe patient handling.
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About one out of every three needlesticks occurs with a hypodermic syringe a device that is available with many types of safety features. As thousands of needlesticks continue to occur from hypodermic needles, hospitals need to do a better job of protecting health care workers from bloodborne pathogens, safety experts say.
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As with most employers, the cost of health insurance was rising year after year for Sentara Healthcare of Norfolk, VA, an integrated health care delivery system that includes eight acute care hospitals, outpatient centers, long-term care, and Optima Health Plan, an insurance subsidiary.
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Outpatient centers have historically attracted little attention from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, although needle market data shows they have lagged in sharps safety. But that hands-off approach is ending with a regional emphasis program in four states.
