Search

Aims and objectives: To determine the prevalence and type of occupational injuries in nurses and their associations with workload, working shift, and nurses' individual and organisational factors. Background: Nurses are vulnerable to occupational injuries due to the nature of their job. Design: A cross‐sectional correlational design (based on STROBE Statement) was conducted. Methods: This study was conducted among 616 nurses of four public hospitals located in four different provinces in Iran. Data were collected using three questionnaires including an organisational and demographic questionnaire, an occupational injuries checklist and the NASA‐TLX questionnaire (about mental workload). Chi‐square test, one‐way ANOVA and multivariate logistic regression were used in SPSS version 23.0 for statistical analysis. Results: Blood and body fluid exposures had the highest prevalence (47.4%) among all injuries. Needlestick injuries showed a significant relation with gender, age, number of shifts in a month and work experience. With increase in mental workload, needlestick injuries increase by 35%. Also, injuries reported by nurses working in rotating shifts were 15%–53% more than nurses working in fixed shifts. Conclusion: Working in rotating shifts and work overload was significantly related to all injuries. Decreasing nurses' mental workload, introducing guidelines and efficient training in shift work schedules can help decrease occupational injuries among nurses. Relevance to clinical practice: In order to reduce occupational injuries among nurses, in addition to incorporating advanced management and technology, it is necessary to pay attention to psychosocial, individual and organisational risk factors related to occupational injuries and their frequency in nurses. Also, reducing personnel's mental and occupational pressure should be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Drivers are vulnerable to musculoskeletal and psychological disorders because of substantially harmful agents in this stressful occupation. This study aims to investigate the influence of driver's physical and psychological health on the risk of road accidents using fuzzy logic approach. Methods: Two input variables including musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and mental health, alongside accident risk levels as output variables were fuzzed using a fuzzy inference system (FIS). Triangular and trapezoid membership functions were used to graphically define outputs related to low, moderate, high and very high, in fuzzy sets. A Mamdani-type FIS was applied to represent all the rules in the IF-THEN format and the patterns of linguistic variables were designed using AND, OR and NOT operators. Results: The results showed that there is significant relationship between MSDs and psychological health with road accidents involving drivers of heavy vehicles (p<0.05). Also, surface graphs illustrated the relationship between MSDs, psychological health and accident risks. FIS as a novel approach was used for predication of accident risk levels involving drivers of heavy vehicles on the basis of health factors. Conclusions: Physical and psychological health can influence the safe operation of heavy vehicle drivers. The fuzzy inference system provided a method that is advantageous and with promising results for modeling of road accident risk levels on the basis of driver's physical and mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BACKGROUND: According to the growth of photocopier usage in workplaces, the potential risk of occupational exposure to the airborne chemicals has been raised up. Hence, monitoring the photocopy worker's respiratory functions seems to be necessary. We aimed to evaluate the respiratory health on photocopy and printing workers so that a reliable description can be made about their occupational hygiene. METHODS: This study was performed in Shiraz, southwest Iran in 2014 and a group of 150 photocopy and printing workers were surveyed as exposed group in addition to a group of 114 office staff as unexposed group. The respiratory standard questionnaire was used to evaluate the prevalence of respiratory symptoms among the selected staff. Pulmonary function indexes including VC, FVC, FEV1 and the FEV1/FVC ratio were calculated. Finally, t-test, Chi Square and multiple logistic regressions were conducted. RESULTS: VC, FVC and FEV1 in photocopy and printing workers were lower than the unexposed group of which these differences for FVC and FEV1 were statistically significant (P CONCLUSIONS: The prevalence of excess respiratory symptoms along with pattern of pulmonary restrictive sings in photocopy and printing workers revealed that the workplace conditions can result in occupational respiratory diseases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Carbon Monoxide (CO) poisoning is one of the most common causes of death in Iran. The present study investigated the indoor and outdoor CO concentrations at hospitals under the supervision of Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences in Sari, Iran. Indoor and outdoor measured CO were conducted over a period of one month during the 2012 winter season in 4 hospital kitchens using a direct measurement device specialized for CO. The average concentrations of CO gas through gas measuring stations were considered at three stations both in and out of the kitchens. The highest and the lowest average concentrations of outdoor CO in Fatemeh Zahra Hospital (about 2 ppm) and Zare Hospital (about 0.33 ppm) were measured respectively. Besides, the highest and the lowest average concentrations of indoor CO were detected in Imam Hospital (as 9.66 ppm) and BuAli Hospital (as7.66 ppm). The highest ratios of I/O (approximately 10 ppm) have been conducted between 8:00 and 9:00a.m. The lowest median concentrations of CO (approximately 8 ppm) between 11:00 and 12:00 a.m. have been measured. Concentrations of CO in all hospitals in this study were significant. This fact shows poorly ventilation of kitchen due to lack of ventilation design engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]