Category: Healthcare

Work-family Conflict, Sleep, and the Heart

  Health care workers represent an increasingly important and ever growing work force in our society. They are also a group of “high-risk workers” meaning they report a lot of musculoskeletal pain, work-related injuries and sleep deficiencies. In addition to this, many health care workers labor in rotating shifts, with little time in-between shifts, so Read More >

Posted on by Orfeu M. Buxton, PhD and Henrik Jacobsen, PhD 7 Comments

Protecting Workers from Ebola: Eight Knowledge Generation Priorities

  On November 3, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council of the National Academies convened a workshop of distinguished representatives from the public and private sectors.   The participants were asked to suggest priorities for research that will “provide public health officials, healthcare providers, and the general public with the most up-to-date information Read More >

Posted on by John Howard, MD; Margaret Kitt, MD; Maryann D’Alessandro, PhD; Lisa Delaney, MS, CIH; Chad Dowell MS, CIH13 Comments

Including Work Information in Electronic Health Records

  Today’s “Health IT Buzz,” the blog of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC), features a blog co-written by Kerry Souza of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and Michael Wittie of the ONC. Posted during “Health Center Week”, the blog highlights the Read More >

Posted on by Kerry Souza, ScD, MPH 2 Comments

Reaching Towards a Healthier, Safer Workplace:NIOSH looks at healthcare worker familiarity with recommended respiratory protection practices

Every day healthcare workers (HCWs) make decisions about the best way to protect themselves. What would you do if you entered the room of a new patient and noticed symptoms such as fever and a mucus-producing cough? As a HCW, you must then ask yourself, “What type of disease does the patient have? What sort Read More >

Posted on by Lindsay Stradtman, MPH; Jaclyn Krah, MA; Debra Novak, PhD, RN 3 Comments

Safe Handling of Hazardous Drugs

  May is National Oncology Nursing Month.  In honor of these nurses and all who work with hazardous drugs (many of which are used in the treatment of cancer) we are posting this blog on how to safely prepare, administer or otherwise handle these drugs. About 8 million U.S. healthcare workers are potentially exposed to Read More >

Posted on by Thomas H. Connor, PhD 16 Comments

How Well Do You Think You Are Protected?

Understanding proper use and disposal of protective gowns for healthcare workers The prevalence of infectious diseases, such as Hepatitis B, Hepatitis C, HIV, SARS and avian flu, have raised the concern of hospital personnel over the possibility of acquiring such infections. Healthcare workers (HCWs) in or outside hospitals who have contact with patients, body fluids, Read More >

Posted on by Selcen Kilinc-Balci, PhD, MBA 16 Comments

Happy N95 Day! A Guide to N95 Resources

  Welcome to year two of this NIOSH-approved observance, marking N95 day as an official annual event. (We debated about decorating our offices with N95s – but that seemed a tad wasteful). To those who missed the memo last year, let us update you. Because N95 respirators are so important to the health and safety Read More >

Posted on by Jaclyn Krah, MA 13 Comments

Ladder Safety: There’s an App for That

NIOSH recently released its first smart phone application (app) for mobile devices. This free app is aimed at improving extension ladder safety by providing real-time safety information delivered via the latest technology. Falls are a persistent source of injury in many occupations and in home use. Falls are the number one cause of construction-worker fatalities Read More >

Posted on by Peter Simeonov, Ph.D., Hongwei Hsiao, Ph.D, and John Powers 45 Comments

Free On-line Violence Prevention Training for Nurses

In 2012, the Healthcare and Social Assistance (HCSA) sector was amongst the largest industry sectors in the U.S. employing an estimated 19.4 million workers (13.5% of the total workforce)[1]. On average, over the last decade, U.S. healthcare workers have accounted for two-thirds of the nonfatal workplace violence injuries in all industries involving days away from Read More >

Posted on by Dan Hartley, EdD; Marilyn Ridenour, BSN, MPH 34 Comments

Advanced Headforms for Evaluating Respirator Fit

Over three million Americans are required to wear respirators in their workplaces. In order to strive for the highest level of protection, ongoing research is essential for learning more about the factors that affect how respirators fit to the face. As part of this pursuit, NIOSH has developed a new robotic manikin headform (called an Read More >

Posted on by Michael Bergman, MS; Ziqing Zhuang, PhD; Ronald E. Shaffer, PhD 3 Comments

How Does Work Affect the Health of the U.S. Population? Free Data from the 2010 NHIS-OHS Provides the Answers

You may have some hypotheses about how work affects the health of the U.S. population, but collecting data from a nationally representative sample is expensive and time-consuming. What if there was free data available at your fingertips? You’re in luck! NIOSH sponsored an Occupational Health Supplement (OHS) to the 2010 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), Read More >

Posted on by Sara E. Luckhaupt, MD, MPH; Dara L. Burris, BS 12 Comments

Does your workplace culture help protect you from hepatitis?

May 19, 2013, is Hepatitis Testing Day. Health care workers are at risk of contracting hepatitis B and C in the workplace. Doctors, nurses, and other staff are predominately exposed to these devastating diseases through needle sticks and other sharps injuries or when fluids from patients splash onto their eyes, nose, or mouth. Hepatitis B Read More >

Posted on by Thomas Cunningham, PhD, and Garrett Burnett, MS, MBA 17 Comments

Women’s Health at Work

This week is Women’s Health Week. With over 58% of U.S. women in the labor force[i], the workplace must be considered when looking at women’s overall health.   We must keep in mind that susceptibility to hazards can be different for men and women.  Additionally, women face different workplace health challenges than men partly because men Read More >

Posted on by Naomi Swanson,Ph.D.; Julie Tisdale-Pardi, MA; CAPT Leslie MacDonald, Sc.D.; Hope M. Tiesman, Ph.D. 62 Comments

Improving Respirator Use and Compliance in Healthcare – An Invitation

  Poor compliance with respiratory protection requirements and proper use recommendations in healthcare settings remains a vexing problem. Given the many possible methods to improve compliance, and the constraints of limited budgets and resources available for research, we are asking the question: where should NIOSH conduct research to address this issue? There are many reasons Read More >

Posted on by Ronald E. Shaffer, Ph.D. ; Debra Novak, DSN, RN; Jaclyn Krah, MA8 Comments

Catching the Flu: NIOSH Research on Airborne Influenza Transmission

As we enter another influenza season, one question continues to vex medical and public health professionals:  How do you stop people from catching the flu? The best way to prevent the flu is by getting an influenza vaccine every year. However, in the event of a large-scale influenza outbreak of a new virus strain or Read More >

Posted on by William G. Lindsley, PhD 35 Comments

Sleep, Pain, and Hospital Workers

We know that decreased sleep duration and extended shifts in healthcare workers are linked to workplace injuries.  The effects of decreased sleep on pain in the workplace are less clear.  New research from the Harvard Center for Work, Health and Wellbeing  –one of four NIOSH Centers of Excellence funded to explore and research the concepts Read More >

Posted on by Orfeu M. Buxton, PhD; Glorian Sorensen, PhD, MPH 16 Comments

NIOSH Research on Work Schedules and Work-related Sleep Loss

Yesterday, in honor of National Sleep Awareness Week, we blogged about sleep and work and the risks to workers, employers, and the public when workers’ hours and shifts do not allow for adequate sleep.   This blog provides a brief overview of some of the work that NIOSH intramural scientists are carrying out to better understand Read More >

Posted on by Claire Caruso, PhD, RN; Luenda Charles, PhD; Tina Lawson, PhD; Akinori Nakata, PhD; Karl Sieber, PhD; Sudha Pandalai, MD, PhD; and Ted Hitchcock, PhD28 Comments

Sleep and Work

Sleep is a vital biological function and many Americans don’t get enough. To coincide with National Sleep Awareness Week, the new NIOSH blog post: Sleep and Work summarizes the risks to workers, employers and the public when long hours and irregular shifts required by many jobs do not allow workers to get adequate sleep. Read More >

Posted on by Claire Caruso, PhD, RN, and Roger R Rosa, PhD78 Comments

Puncture: Exposure for Bloodborne Pathogen Exposure

The movie "Puncture" tells the story of a nurse who contracts AIDS from a needle while at work. Unfortunately, this all-too-common scenario is not fiction. Read more about accidental needlesticks and a program from NIOSH that can reduce these injuries substantially.  Read More >

Posted on by Thomas Cunningham, PhD, and Garrett Burnett, MS, MBA8 Comments

Assaults on Nursing Assistants

Recent NIOSH research finds that 35% of nursing assistants working in nursing homes reported injuries from aggression by residents and 12% reported human bites. These reports of workplace violence are even higher among those working in homes with special units for Alzheimer patients.  Read More >

Posted on by SangWoo Tak, ScD, MPH11 CommentsTags