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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
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The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA |
Jamie Tessler, MPH1, Manuel Cifuentes, MD, MPH1, Laura Punnett, ScD1, Nicholas Warren, ScD2, Jeff Casey, MS1, and Jean Cromie, PhD3. (1) Department of Work Environment, University of Massachusetts Lowell, One University Avenue, Lowell, MA 01854, 617-971-9603, jtessler@igc.org, (2) Ergonomic Technology Center, University of CT Health Center, 263 Farmington Avenue, MC 6210, Farmington, CT 01060-6210, (3) Senior Lecturer, LaTrobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, 3086, Australia
The healthcare industry in the United States employs over 11 million workers and is expanding, concurrent with an economic and industrial restructuring of healthcare systems. Healthcare systems, in response to national policy shifts, technology and the local economy, have evolved into increasingly competitive organizations. How is the healthcare workforce affected by these ongoing changes? Work organization impacts the worker through scheduling, workload, time pressure, social support, and so on - with a consequent impact on health outcomes (musculoskeletal disorders, acute injuries, mental health). Thus, the transformation of the healthcare industry challenges occupational health researchers to develop new methods to explore the relationship between work organization and worker health outcomes. For the most part, "work organization" cannot be directly observed. Conceptual challenges encountered in attempting to observe indicators of work organization stressors include: (1) limited knowledge of which "upstream" variables will be predictive of worker health and safety; (2) difficulty in defining work organization characteristics operationally, so as to achieve non-overlapping variables and good inter-observer agreement; (3) the need to combine direct observations with information from administrative and other sources about domains that cannot directly be observed (e.g., understaffing, worker involvement in the division of labor); (4) the subjectivity of the observer's response to visual and auditory information about the work process; and (5) the time necessary to observe jobs that are not highly routinized, in contrast to short-cycle manufacturing jobs. Results from pilot testing of a proposed method will be presented.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Ergonomics, Health Care Workers
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.