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The association between weekly work hours, crew familiarity, and occupational injury and illness in emergency medical services workers.

ABSTRACT: Emergency Medical Services (EMS) workers are shift workers in a high-risk, uncontrolled occupational environment. EMS-worker fatigue has been associated with self-reported injury, but the influence of extended weekly work hours is unknown.A retrospective cohort study was designed using historical shift schedules and occupational injury and illness reports. Using multilevel models, we examined the association between weekly work hours, crew familiarity, and injury or illness.In total, 966,082 shifts and 950 reports across 14 EMS agencies were obtained over a 1-3 year period. Weekly work hours were not associated with occupational injury or illness. Schedule characteristics that yield decreased exposure to occupational hazards, such as part-time work and night work, conferred reduced risk of injury or illness.Extended weekly work hours were not associated with occupational injury or illness. Future work should focus on transient exposures and agency-level characteristics that may contribute to adverse work events.

SUBMITTER: Weaver MD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4715701 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The association between weekly work hours, crew familiarity, and occupational injury and illness in emergency medical services workers.

Weaver Matthew D MD Patterson P Daniel PD Fabio Anthony A Moore Charity G CG Freiberg Matthew S MS Songer Thomas J TJ

American journal of industrial medicine 20150825 12

<h4>Objective</h4>Emergency Medical Services (EMS) workers are shift workers in a high-risk, uncontrolled occupational environment. EMS-worker fatigue has been associated with self-reported injury, but the influence of extended weekly work hours is unknown.<h4>Methods</h4>A retrospective cohort study was designed using historical shift schedules and occupational injury and illness reports. Using multilevel models, we examined the association between weekly work hours, crew familiarity, and injur ...[more]

PMID: 26391202

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Project description:BackgroundFarm work entails a heterogeneous mixture of exposures that vary considerably across farms and farmers. Farm work is associated with various health outcomes, both adverse and beneficial. One mechanism by which farming exposures can impact health is through the microbiome, including the indoor built environment microbiome. It is unknown how individual occupational exposures shape the microbial composition in workers' homes.ObjectivesWe investigated associations between farm work activities, including specific tasks and pesticide use, and the indoor microbiome in the homes of 468 male farmers.MethodsParticipants were licensed pesticide applicators, mostly farmers, enrolled in the Agricultural Lung Health Study from 2008-2011. Vacuumed dust from participants' bedrooms underwent whole-genome shotgun sequencing for indoor microbiome assessment. Using questionnaire data, we evaluated 6 farm work tasks (processing of either hay, silage, animal feed, fertilizer, or soy/grains, and cleaning grain bins) and 19 pesticide ingredients currently used in the past year, plus 7 persistent banned pesticide ingredients ever used.ResultsAll 6 work tasks were associated with increased within-sample microbial diversity, with a positive dose-response for the sum of tasks (p=0.001). All tasks were associated with altered overall microbial compositions (weighted UniFrac p=0.001) and with higher abundance of specific microbes, including soil-based microbes such as Haloterrigena . Among the 19 pesticides, only current use of glyphosate and past use of lindane were associated with increased within-sample diversity (p=0.02-0.04). Ten currently used pesticides and all 7 banned pesticides were associated with altered microbial composition (p=0.001-0.04). Six pesticides were associated with differential abundance of certain microbes.DiscussionSpecific farm activities and exposures can impact the dust microbiome inside homes. Our work suggests that occupational farm exposures could impact the health of workers and their families through modifying the indoor environment, specifically the microbial composition of house dust, offering possible future intervention targets.

Project description:An adequate work climate fosters productivity in organizations and increases employee satisfaction. Workers in emergency health services (EHS) have an extremely high degree of responsibility and consequent stress. Therefore, it is essential to foster a good work climate in this context. Despite this, scales with a full study of their psychometric properties (i.e., validity evidence based on test content, internal structure and relations to other variables, and reliability) are not available to measure work climate in EHS specifically. For this reason, our objective was to develop a scale to measure the quality of work climates in EHS. We carried out three studies. In Study 1, we used a mixed-method approach to identify the latent conceptual structure of the construct work climate. Thus, we integrated the results found in (a) a previous study, where a content analysis of seven in-depth interviews obtained from EHS professionals in two hospitals in Gibraltar Countryside County was carried out; and (b) the factor analysis of the responses given by 113 EHS professionals from these same centers to 18 items that measured the work climate in health organizations. As a result, we obtained 56 items grouped into four factors (work satisfaction, productivity/achievement of aims, interpersonal relationships, and performance at work). In Study 2, we presented validity evidence based on test content through experts' judgment. Fourteen experts from the methodology and health fields evaluated the representativeness, utility, and feasibility of each of the 56 items with respect to their factor (theoretical dimension). Forty items met the inclusion criterion, which was to obtain an Osterlind index value greater than or equal to 0.5 in the three aspects assessed. In Study 3, 201 EHS professionals from the same centers completed the resulting 40-item scale. This new instrument produced validity evidence based on the internal structure in a second-order factor model with four components (RMSEA = 0.079, GFI = 0.97, AGFI = 0.97, CFI = 0.97; NFI = 0.95, and NNFI = 0.97); absence of Differential Item Functioning (DIF) in 80% of the items; reliability (? = 0.96); and validity evidence based on relations to other variables, specifically the test-criterion relationship (? = 0.680). Finally, we discuss further developments of the instrument and its possible implications for EHS workers.

Dataset Information

The association between weekly work hours, crew familiarity, and occupational injury and illness in emergency medical services workers.

Publications

The association between weekly work hours, crew familiarity, and occupational injury and illness in emergency medical services workers.

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