Occupationally Exposed: It Is Time to Protect Ourselves Fiorilli, Paul N.; Goldsweig, Andrew M.
Journal of the Society for Cardiovascular Angiography & Interventions,
May-June 2023, 2023-05-00, Letnik:
2, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Construction sites are hazardous with various potential hazards that can occur at any time. The combination of different factors always causes the construction fatalities, and the majority of these ...fatalities could be prevented if workers followed on-site regulatory rules. However, compliance of regulatory rules is not strictly enforced among workers due to all kinds of reasons. Although previously proposed vision-based approaches are available for occupational hazards identification, the practicality is limited by the lack of automated understanding and adaptability to regulatory rules changes. In response to these gaps, this paper proposes a novel graph-based framework that integrates linguistic and visual information to process regulatory rule sentences and images for on-site occupational hazards identification. Particularly, a regulatory rules processing approach is presented to automatically extract and represent the key linguistic information of regulatory rules and a vision-based image scene information understanding approach is introduced to process on-site images by the combination of deep learning-based object detection and individual detection using geometric relationships analysis. Additionally, an automated reasoning approach is proposed to provide the integration of the processed linguistic and visual information and perform hazards identification. The hazards of two scenes, i.e., “working on height” and “operating a grinder”, were successfully identified with significantly higher performance compared to the baseline model.
•A novel graph-based framework that integrates linguistic and visual information for on-site hazards identification.•A semantic analysis approach based on NLP and ontology is proposed for automated regulatory rule processing.•A scene understanding approach based on object and individual detection is proposed for visual information extraction.•An automated reasoning approach is presented for hazards identification based on graph structure analysis.•The proposed model achieves better performance compared to the baseline model on hazards identification of two scenes.
Introduction: This study was conducted to evaluate the adoption of yoga techniques as an alternative therapy in the management of physical and psychological occupational hazards among physical ...therapists.
Materials and Methods: A validated closed-ended questionnaire was used to assess education and experience level, personal health and occupational hazards/habits, and treatment strategies used for the physical and psychological occupational hazards for participants in their current position. By e-mail, we invited 500 randomly selected physical therapists to participate.
Results: We received completed questionnaires from 119 physical therapists. Musculoskeletal pain with stress was the most common occupational hazard reported, followed by only stress, and only musculoskeletal pain. Regarding the pain, the lumbar spine, cervical spine, thoracic spine, shoulder, and knee were the most affected parts of the body. Regarding pain and stress, only a third physical therapists adopted yoga as an alternative treatment for these occupational hazards; physical therapists tended to engage in other forms of exercise, listen to music or utilize massage to treat pain and stress. Lack of time and lack of training were the most common reasons cited by physical therapists for not practicing yoga. Interestingly, 85.7% of physical therapists would recommend yoga as a treatment for their patients.
Conclusion: While musculoskeletal pain and stress were extremely common occupational hazards among physical therapists, only about a third of physical therapists adopted yoga as an alternative treatment for these occupational hazards.
With one billion people on the move or having moved in 2018, migration is a global reality, which has also become a political lightning rod. Although estimates indicate that the majority of global ...migration occurs within low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), the most prominent dialogue focuses almost exclusively on migration from LMICs to high-income countries (HICs). Nowadays, populist discourse demonises the very same individuals who uphold economies, bolster social services, and contribute to health services in both origin and destination locations. Those in positions of political and economic power continue to restrict or publicly condemn migration to promote their own interests. Meanwhile nationalist movements assert so-called cultural sovereignty by delineating an us versus them rhetoric, creating a moral emergency.
In response to these issues, the UCL-
Lancet
Commission on Migration and Health was convened to articulate evidence-based approaches to inform public discourse and policy. The Commission undertook analyses and consulted widely, with diverse international evidence and expertise spanning sociology, politics, public health science, law, humanitarianism, and anthropology. The result of this work is a report that aims to be a call to action for civil society, health leaders, academics, and policy makers to maximise the benefits and reduce the costs of migration on health locally and globally. The outputs of our work relate to five overarching goals that we thread throughout the report.
First, we provide the latest evidence on migration and health outcomes. This evidence challenges common myths and highlights the diversity, dynamics, and benefits of modern migration and how it relates to population and individual health. Migrants generally contribute more to the wealth of host societies than they cost. Our Article shows that international migrants in HICs have, on average, lower mortality than the host country population. However, increased morbidity was found for some conditions and among certain subgroups of migrants, (eg, increased rates of mental illness in victims of trafficking and people fleeing conflict) and in populations left behind in the location of origin. Currently, in 2018, the full range of migrants’ health needs are difficult to assess because of poor quality data. We know very little, for example, about the health of undocumented migrants, people with disabilities, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, or intersex (LGBTI) individuals who migrate or who are unable to move.
Second, we examine multisector determinants of health and consider the implication of the current sector-siloed approaches. The health of people who migrate depends greatly on structural and political factors that determine the impetus for migration, the conditions of their journey, and their destination. Discrimination, gender inequalities, and exclusion from health and social services repeatedly emerge as negative health influences for migrants that require cross-sector responses.
Third, we critically review key challenges to healthy migration. Population mobility provides economic, social, and cultural dividends for those who migrate and their host communities. Furthermore, the right to the highest attainable standard of health, regardless of location or migration status, is enshrined in numerous human rights instruments. However, national sovereignty concerns overshadow these benefits and legal norms. Attention to migration focuses largely on security concerns. When there is conjoining of the words health and migration, it is either focused on small subsets of society and policy, or negatively construed. International agreements, such as the UN Global Compact for Migration and the UN Global Compact on Refugees, represent an opportunity to ensure that international solidarity, unity of intent, and our shared humanity triumphs over nationalist and exclusionary policies, leading to concrete actions to protect the health of migrants.
Fourth, we examine equity in access to health and health services and offer evidence-based solutions to improve the health of migrants. Migrants should be explicitly included in universal health coverage commitments. Ultimately, the cost of failing to be health-inclusive could be more expensive to national economies, health security, and global health than the modest investments required.
Finally, we look ahead to outline how our evidence can contribute to synergistic and equitable health, social, and economic policies, and feasible strategies to inform and inspire action by migrants, policy makers, and civil society. We conclude that migration should be treated as a central feature of 21st century health and development. Commitments to the health of migrating populations should be considered across all Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and in the implementation of the Global Compact for Migration and Global Compact on Refugees. This Commission offers recommendations that view population mobility as an asset to global health by showing the meaning and reality of good health for all. We present four key messages that provide a focus for future action.
For nearly two years, the world has been facing a common crisis as Covid-19. In the meantime, governments have suffered a wide variety of damages and costs, and damage to human capital and the loss ...of health professionals is one of the irreparable costs of health systems in all governments. During this crisis, health care systems and specialists were exposed to special occupational hazards over specific periods of time, and the exposure of the medical staff to these hazards in hospitals led to a number of opportunistic incidents. Investigation of opportunistic incidents can help identify the sources of occupational hazards of medical staff and lead to proper management of risks associated with these accidents. This article aims to draw researchers' attention to opportunistic incidents during the Covid 19 pandemic as a global crisis in hospitals.
Burnout, characterized by emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and decreased personal accomplishments, poses a significant burden on individual nurses’ health and mental wellbeing. As growing ...evidence highlights the adverse consequences of burnout for clinicians, patients, and organizations, it is imperative to examine nurse burnout in the healthcare system.
The purpose of this review is to systematically and critically appraise the current literature to examine the associations between nurse burnout and patient and hospital organizational outcomes.
A systematic review following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses was conducted. PubMed, CINAHL, PsychInfo, Scopus, and Embase were the search engines used. The inclusion criteria were any primary studies examining burnout among nurses working in hospitals as an independent variable, in peer-reviewed journals, and written in English. The search was performed from October 2018 to January 2019 and updated in January and October 2020.
A total of 20 studies were included in the review. The organizational-related outcomes associated with nurse burnout were (1) patient safety, (2) quality of care, (3) nurses’ organizational commitment, (4) nurse productivity, and (5) patient satisfaction. For these themes, nurse burnout was consistently inversely associated with outcome measures.
Nurse burnout is an occupational hazard affecting nurses, patients, organizations, and society at large. Nurse burnout is associated with worsening safety and quality of care, decreased patient satisfaction, and nurses’ organizational commitment and productivity. Traditionally, burnout is viewed as an individual issue. However, reframing burnout as an organizational and collective phenomenon affords the broader perspective necessary to address nurse burnout.
Tweetable abstract: Not only nurse burnout associated w/ worsening safety & quality of care, but also w/ nurses' organizational commitment and productivity. Reframing burnout, as an organizational & collective phenomenon is necessary.
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